I am generally anti-Apple and think Steve Jobs was a massive cock, but I still think that's true. Look at how ineffectual Apple is without him.
Perhaps, but I just don't agree that "but he made a lot of money" excuses cruelty or nastiness. We didn't and still don't need Apple.
It's often criticized, and over the last few conversations on the subject I'd say that the tone on slashdot has been more muted, with less support for his level of abuse. On the other hand, when has Linus gone off on someone who hadn't definitely earned a less-than-polite brush-off?
That's great, but for many years every nasty, unprofessional, over-the-top tantrum he's thrown has been received overwhelmingly glowingly by the slashdot commentariat. I think it's probably the best instance of what I'm talking about, this idea of noticing your own flaws on a successful person and trying to explain those flaws as virtues that explain the success.
Where are those people now? We haven't heard from them basically since... well, you know. Since their argument got taken away..
They were defending him after the guilty verdict. Even after he led police to the body, there were some people on slashdot seriously trying to come up with explanations how he could know where the body was but not have killed her. And, of course, loudly insisting that even if he did kill her there was reasonable doubt during the trial (which there absolutely was not). The defenses tended to be "he's just a geek, he's being persecuted for being uncomfortable with people like me!"
He was in a position of awesome responsibility and performed his job duties to the best of his ability. That's a fairly useless level of integrity in my opinion, but yeah, a very high level as well. He was only arrested after actually having made arrangements to hand over the passwords, as well.
The problem is he did not do his job; he created a new job in his head and did that one. And any administrator who sets himself up as the sole accessor of mission-critical hardware is doing a poor job per se. But in any event, the response here was over-the-top support
Oh no, he's both. He's an easy target, but still a target.
But around here any criticisms of his personality are frequently met with insinuations that it's just the US trying to destroy him. I really don't see the big deal in dropping charges, raising them again, etc.. It's actually not uncommon in criminal prosecutions at least in the US, as decision-making authority moves from police to prosecutors to maybe a higher level prosecutor.
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.