In his email, Linus announced that he will be taking some time off from working on Linux to
get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately.
More snippets:
The fact that I then misread people and don't realize (for years) how badly I've judged a situation and contributed to an unprofessional environment is not good.
I need to take a break to get help on how to behave differently and fix some issues in my tooling and workflow.
What do you think about this? Did you expect this to come?
I think we all change as we grow older and gain more experience. I know I look back and cringe at things I have done or said in the past. Times change and people change. What we once thought of as perfectly fine behavior 10-30 years ago may not be today.
He seems like a smart guy :) He said he has looked at himself in the mirror and seen things he would like to change. It seems like something we could all stand to do once in a while.
I think he's in your face guy and he is recently facing a lot of challenges from the people who are extremely sensitive and get offended easily. So he's being told to take break to adjust with current generation of developers who can't handle his attitude. I am not surprised that he is taking break.
Honestly, Linux has thrived BECAUSE it had a benevolent dictator at the top. A central vision and drive, that gives a constant heading and direction.
I'm worried in his absence that the Kernel codebase will simply degrade into just another of the many s*storm of "design by committee" or worse, "commit by whoever with no oversight".
Sometimes being in charge, sticking to a vision, and promoting good practices is HIGHLY unpopular -- especially amongst those who try to take sleazy shortcuts, steps backwards because they don't understand what's actually going on, or have just been packed full of manure by a society that values expedience over quality.
At the same time, without him at the top maybe once and for all we could have the driver API locked in stone so that major kernel version updates don't break legacy drivers to the point nobody wants to fix them? See APM support -- nothing like having to stick with the 2.4 kernel just because you want your CPU fan to actually come on in a P3 laptop.
Maybe we could even get better hardware level access from the application/api level? You know, so Linux could be USEFUL for professional grade audio production instead of a crippled toy?
No, wait, that's asking too much. Especially when the big two are ALSO telling professional musicians to sod off.
I think it's for the better. Linus Torvalds has quite a reputation for being rude. The Linux Community is huge with thousands of contributors. As the creator and the sole person who decides what gets merged to the kernel, he sets an example for the whole community. This decision communicates to everyone that it's not okay to be toxic and unprofessional when part of a community. I'm glad it happened.
I personally thought his reputation was quite funny and didn't really mind it staying that way (but I'm not a kernel developer).
But of course rationally speaking, it's better to have a more welcoming, professional atmosphere. So it's probably for the best.
I am not sure what to think. He is known to be rude and he should adopt a different way to critic other people. I personally don't care, but I was never in the line of fire. Lets see if he comes back and how :)
He seems to be three years older than me, so I can actually answer this with a fair amount of experience. I started in '88, with Linux v1.0 following within the next six years.
It's a different industry in a different World.
Honestly, as a compliment to Linus, misreading people is only possible when they aren't transparent enough (or willing to adapt.) I, on the other hand, am quite the opposite - I'm way too honest and foolishly expect an honest answer in return... which leads to the question, "How's that been working out for you, fella?" How that translates to someone not willing to accept being corrected, or falsifying their experience to play the role they've been given, is never positive or proactive.
No matter who we are or where we're from, there has been an overall degradation of how humans communicate as a whole. In fact, I would even dare to say that the current generations (along with the ones that will follow) have not been lead properly, thus validating their disrespect when it comes to the reaction they may have when being lead by someone who may know a more effective way of doing things.
But, then... there's a much higher level of aggravation and disappointment when it comes to modern day development and design. Unless you've been around for a while, you may not see what's blatantly obvious - the process I've come to call, "Stick and Move".
Development, especially, is a victim of that. Too many libraries and frameworks are spelling disaster for an industry that use to be about "finding the problem, and applying a solution" - which, should only be done with the underlying language and not something built on top of it.
Many of our current issues are caused by something trendy, placed on top of something fundamental. Almost like someone cursing at a screen because their code should work, and it isn't - the blame gets thrown at the language, and not their inability to write it correctly. However, now there are many more things that could go wrong these days, and way too much time needed to invest in educating yourself properly, considering that the EoL for most frameworks these days are five to eight years, and it takes approximately that same amount of time to become fully proficient. Even if they continue to exist, those libraries, frameworks and tools - along with the people who supported them - have become victims of the "Stick and Move" mentality.
You've stuck with something, built part of your skill set off it, and now need to move away from it. Rinse. Repeat.
Having to deal with this on a daily basis makes you want to slap the stupidity out of people... but the realization that most senior developers and designers will eventually have, is that they're actually using something that works, but antiquated in it's approach, even if it's much more productive and effective.
And, there's the catch... that's no longer the way things are done. From Waterfall to Agile. From SVN to Git. From Vanilla JS to a JS framework that requires processing it's own flavor of tools that exists solely for the purpose of calling proprietary products "open source".
Again, it's a different industry in a different World. And, I'm glad that Linus - as a pioneer and even a role-model for some - is admitting his mistakes publicly and letting all the younger folks know that there's a benefit in admitting you're wrong... and that it's not the code's fault. It's about unselfishly, "finding the problem, and applying a solution" on both a personal and professional level.