Comment by artyom
10 months ago
> an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds
Exactly the point. IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership - which has been criticized ad-nauseam over the years; yet it's the only thing that yields results.
So in the specific instances (like this one) where he's not decisively, unequivocally, and even harshly saying "yes" or "no" to something, the community shows a very clear incapability of reaching a decision.
Reminds me of a similar scenario that happened years ago with GVR stepping down as BDFL for Python - just after a tiresome and wasteful fight with the community's opinions.
"Community" is just a very naive ideal for me. There's a finite number of people that can do the job, and even a more finite number of people that can make a decision and stand by it.
Agree
The more I hear about "community" the more I roll my eyes
It can be great at doing the work but it is awful at setting direction, evolving with the times and focusing on what's important
Going by another story on the front page, I have my long list of criticism about systemd but the "get things done" attitude needed to be commended
What an absolutely awful statement about one of the most successful community projects ever. Direction usually comes from the community and the maintainers just steer it. Little in the kernel comes from maintainers saying "let's do X" and community members implementing it
> Little in the kernel comes from maintainers saying "let's do X" and community members implementing it
Maintainers do steer direction of development though. A lot comes from maintainer saying "we are not accepting XYZ".
Today we only have proper open source GPU drivers because people like David Airlie who stand for their principle against likes of Nvidia and AMD.
See how slow Wayland progress has been for an example of my grudges with that model of development
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Perhaps you could fork the kernel and start a better community?
> IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership - which has been criticized ad-nauseam over the years; yet it's the only thing that yields results.
I wear garlic every day and have yet to be attacked by a vampire; clearly this is due to the garlic!
Tang/ballpoint pens/velcro never would have been invented if it weren't for the Apollo program.
etc.
All of those inventions were invented at least a couple years before the Apollo program.
>"Community" is just a very naive ideal for me.
I guess you are safe to say this now. But from 2014 to 2024, open source is not about code licensing but about the Community.
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> IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership
Naah, I don't think that's the only thing that did it. It was that, and the fact that people dared rely on it -- dared trust it to stick around, and to stay a single thing in stead of splintering up. And the thing that made it Open Source that stays Open Source -- that made it, in fact, Free Software -- is the license.
The two things that made Linux successful as a project are Linus' strong leadership and the GPL.
Just look at BSD: It had the backing of a whole darn university near Silicon Valley, not a single student somewhere North of The Wall. It had a head start by several years. And it had name recognition far beyond its home country[1]. And look where it is now: There are (at least?) three of them, and even together they're a marginal phenomenon among operating systems. I think that's because of the too-permissive BSD license.
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[1]: The first I heard of "Open Systems" was well before I got into working with computers for a living, as a student at another university in the Frozen North in the late 1980s. My fiend and neighbour, a computer student, raved about how cool Unix was: "And you can even get it for free! It's called BSD!"
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Some of Linus's past messages came across as needlessly aggressive and insulting. There really was no practical reason for that and just served to alienate contributors, and it came across as unprofessional.
You can be a strong, opinionated leader and still be kind (or at least neutral) to the people you're working with.
A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired. It doesn't do any good if the people working under you feel like trash.
It's the difference between telling a contributor "you're an f**ing idiot" vs "this code isn't up to standards, try again". Same message, but completely different impact on your team.
> A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired.
Do you have examples of this? The only "good" leaders that are strong and opinionated I can think of always comes across as leans towards being an asshole.
> Same message, but completely different impact on your team.
Let's change it from "you're a fucking idiot" to "this code is fucking trash". It's not insulting to the specific person, but it definitely gets the point across that the code is no good and much less ambiguous to "it's not up to standards".
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Using business-approved language doesn't actually make your message more friendly.
It's not line Linus was prone to using flowery prose against random novices - the rant he's known for were mostly addressed at senior maintainers who really should have known better.
Bad faith arguments like this don't really belong on HN. Please represent the substance of your argument accurately rather than debating this inaccurate strawman argument.
You disagreeing with an argument does not mean it was made in bad faith (or is without merit for that matter).
You seem to be implying that he had nothing to apologise for, and that abusive behavior is an acceptable part of strong leadership.
It’s sad that this even needs to be called out.
Except you have no authority to call that out, and we're not forced by law to agree with you.
In my opinion Linus was never abusive or disrespectful - just blunt and direct.
Unfortunately, there seems to exist people (like me) that would prefer such individuals instead of nice empty words just in case someone gets offended.
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Can you explain in simple terms why a person cannot reply abusively (whatever that means) if he so desires? You're not obliged to interact with him, it's a free choice to join or to quit the lkml.
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Yep, that happened. "Forced to apologize" essentially describes it.
A quick sweep through recent messages in LKML shows that there's a healthy return to form for him, maybe with less curse words, but as succinct and impactful as it should be nonetheless.
No, you get it backwards. Open source community folks despise any commands, the moment Linus orders free folks like you to do something will be the moment his leadership ends.