So, to be clear as to the outline you present: Mauro made one ill-advised comment on the bug, and Linus shit all over him? No "Mauro, you're wrong and here's why", no "Hey Mauro, you need to remember that we don't break userspace apps, regardless of where we think the bug lies". Just zero to SHUT THE FUCK UP.

That's the problem here: Not that Linus corrected Mauro, but that he exploded in a rage. A more temperate response would have resolved what really was ultimately a miscommunication.

BTW, you leave out Mauro's longer, more detailed response for where he lays out a good case for understanding whether or not there's a userspace bug in play because it explains why the tests didn't find the regression. Linus assumed Mauro was passing the buck; Mauro was actually trying to track down where the process failed. But that doesn't matter, does it? We're geeks, we're socially efficient. And if Mauro now has a giant black mark of Linus shitting on him, well, it doesn't matter if Linus was right because that's how we roll, and the rest of the world is wrong.

If you need to repeat it for the fifth time, that person shouldn't be doing that job. Maybe in a Fortune 500 you have a situation where the incompetent can't be removed for various reasons, but there's no reason that a top-level kernel maintainer needs to be left in place, as if publicly flogging him is somehow better than just getting rid of him.

Actually, if you read the whole thread, you find that Mauro was asking for clarification, and Linus was wrong to jump on him the way he did. Linus wasn't "socially efficient", he was too quick on the draw. Not that Mauro should wait for an apology, because, it's socially efficient Linus being his bad self.

We're not socially retarded, the rest of the world is socially retarded.

You should put this on a t-shirt.

That's an extreme, though, kicking someone off because they made a mistake.

But publicly shitting all over them in recorded text form isn't extreme?

But I stand by what I said as "empirically true." Linus was nice to someone once and they committed suicide over it. That's empirical evidence that "being nice" doesn't always help. That's horrible.

First, a single example of a response to a behaviour is not nearly sufficient data to form a general rule about how to treat people.

Second, committing suicide isn't empirical evidence that being nice is mistaken. The person who killed themselves did so for vastly more complicated reasons than "Linus was nice to me" (or "Linus wasn't mean to me"). Even if a single example were sufficient, a suicide is a bad example because, almost by definition, it's such an extreme reaction that it fails to be generalizable because, with most people, you're not risking them suiciding, so you don't need to avoid that outcome.

It's better to be straight with people so that problems get resolved NOW rather than become lingering issues down the road. Sometimes this means writing an e-mail that says: shut the fuck up.

I dispute the connection between the first and second statements. You don't need to be an abusive asshole to be straight with someone and resolve problems NOW. If you do need to be an abusive asshole to communicate to that person, that's prima facie evidence that the recipient shouldn't be in that position in the first place. Taking correction without drama is a basic skill for any professional.

I've been in Linus' position in my own projects. I've fired employees because they weren't sufficiently competent for the task. I've never needed to use profanity or abuse to communicate my position and my decision.

Linus gets away with it because he's Linus, not because it's necessary or justified in this case.

But ultimately who cares?

I care. Incidents like this set the tone for the community. When 'heroes' get to rationalize bad behaviour, everyone trying to be a hero does it too. Read this comment in this thread: pure "we are nerds, we are strong, we shit on each other because shitting on each other makes us stronger." Now imagine that guy being a team lead. Or the guy who compares kernel coding to being a Navy SEAL.

Notice how what you said isn't necessarily empirically true (and I certainly don't think it is), it's true in the words of the guy dishing out the abuse. "I have to hit her, she doesn't listen otherwise."

Linus absolutely can fire people. He can remove their commit bit. He can email the Red Hat CEO and say "either take Mauro off his kernel duties or I'll very publicly declare that I won't work with him, which will be terrible PR for Red Hat." He can simply say on the list "Mauro is not fit to manage his kernel duties, and I will no longer accept contributions from him."

Don't like it? too bad.

Hate the game, not the playa?

Those two things tend to go together, in the rest of the world.

Of course, neither harsh words nor general "please check" encomiums are as good as calmly, straightforwardly stating "we do it this specific way, you did it that way instead, as a result we have this undesirable result. Do it again, correctly. In the future, check X, Y and Z to ensure that you don't repeat this mistake."

Only in the socially retarded world of /. is this sort of behaviour lauded because the best behaviour that I described above seems too goddamned difficult to manage.

And on that note, we have here a similar attack in China where a man went to a school and tried to kill a bunch of children:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/22-children-1-adult-injured-in-knife-attack-outside-central-china-primary-school/2012/12/14/feac17e6-45be-11e2-8c8f-fbebf7ccab4e_story.html

"22 injured in knife attack". Tools indeed.

Awesome. Mod AC up.

Hunh... I was just totally wrong on this.

I googled "HR 6407 votes", and ended up on these pages: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/79-1946/h172 and http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/79-1946/s204. I saw the "HR 6407", and didn't see that they were for a different congress... from 1946.

I withdraw my assertions unequivocally, and apologize for the really shitty things I said.

Someone please mod parent up: Extremely Informative.

Are you joking, lying, or just completely ignorant?

I'm more informed than you are, though you found the same site I did.

In the House, Republicans voted 145 to 15 in favour of the bill, with 29 abstaining; Democrats voted 128 to 59 against it, with 51 abstaining.

In the Senate, Republicans voted 20 to 5 in favour of the bill, with 14 abstaining; Democrats voted 38 to 1 against it, with 14 abstaining.

So when I blame Republicans for the bill, I'm blaming the party that supplied the vast majority of the votes to pass it. I'm blaming the party that introduced it. I'm blaming the party of the president who signed it. No, they didn't do it alone, but it seems pretty clear to me who bears the most responsibility for the situation created by that bill.

And by the way, fuck you, you worthless piece of shit, for starting what could have been an informative response with insults. I hope your kids die of Cystic Fibrosis.

You're just totally wrong on the facts.

All the unions had already made significant concessions in the two prior bankruptcies. No one was asking for more. They'd all taken wage, pension and benefit cuts repeatedly, and management couldn't do anything except give themselves raises.

If you were in that union, you'd have already had two haircuts and been asked for a third. How many times would you let the company bend you over before you said "enough?"

They were going to be out of a job anyway, so accepting further cuts would just trap them further in wage slavery; then when the axe did fall, their hourly rate would be even lower for when they applied for unemployment. Hostess has been in bankruptcy twice in the last couple years.

Hostess followed the Bain model: private investors load it with debt, taking that money out in fees to themselves; force workers to make crippling concessions so they can take more fees out; liquidate the company to suck the corpse dry.

The Baker's Union decided not to cooperate in their own rape. The surprise here is that the Teamsters rolled over and said "you'll like it better if you can't hear me whimpering because I'm facing away from you."

Of course I blame one party: It was the Republicans who were in the majority in both houses of Congress when they passed the laws that crippled the financial position of the USPS. It was the Republicans who voted for the law, while most Democrats opposed it. Who else should I blame?

Does saying "it's all grey" make it easier for you to ignore people who are fucking over other people?