Intel Developer Tells Linus To Stop Using Explicit Language. (Worth A Read)

An Intel Developer, Sarah Sharp wrote her first message in the mailing list pointing on Linus Torvalds to stop using foul language.
THIS IS WORTH A READ !

Sarah's mail-list to Kernel Public-Community :

On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 18:17:08 +0200, Ingo Molnar <#-Link-Snipped-#> wrote:
> * Linus Torvalds <#-Link-Snipped-#> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Steven Rostedt <#-Link-Snipped-#> wrote:
> > >
> > > I tend to hold things off after -rc4 because you scare me more than Greg
> > > does ;-)
> >
> > Have you guys *seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should*
> > scare you. He might squish you without ever even noticing.
>
> Greg might be a giant and he might squish people without ever even
> noticing, but that's just a grave, deadly physical threat no real kernel
> hacker ever feels threatened by. (Not much can hurt us deep in our dark
> basements after all, except maybe earthquakes, gamma ray eruptions and Mom
> trying to clean up around the computers.)
>
> So Greg, if you want it all to change, create some _real_ threat: be frank
> with contributors and sometimes swear a bit. That will cut your mailqueue
> in half, promise!

On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:22:27 -0700, Linus wrote:
> Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you
> make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say "I
> know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg
> will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it
> for stable".
>
> You may need to learn to shout at people.

Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable?
Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence.
Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse.

Not *fucking* cool. Violence, whether it be physical intimidation,
verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional
on the mailing lists.

Let's discuss this at Kernel Summit where we can at least yell at each
other in person. Yeah, just try yelling at me about this. I'll roar
right back, louder, for all the people who lose their voice when they
get yelled at by top maintainers. I won't be the nice girl anymore.

Sarah Sharp

Linus Replied To Sarah :

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Sarah Sharp
<#-Link-Snipped-#> wrote:
>
> Oh, FFS, I just called out on private email for "playing the victim
> card". I will repeat: this is not just about me, or other minorities.
> I should not have to ask for professional behavior on the mailing lists.
> Professional behavior should be the default.

Bullshit.

The thing is, the "victim card" is exactly about trying to enforce
your particular expectations on others, and trying to do so in a very
particular way. It's the old "think of the children" argument. And
it's bogus. Calling things "professional" is just more of the same -
trying to enforce some kind of convention on others by trying to claim
that it's the only acceptable way.

[ Since you seem to want to keep this in public, I'll just
cut-and-paste from my reply, so you have already seen this part of my
argument, it's only slightly edited because now I'm no longer typing
on my cellphone ]

The thing is, different people act and react differently. On both
sides. And I think we should recognize that and also *allow* for that.
And sometimes it means, for example, that people interact primarily
with certain people that they like more - because they are a better
"fit".

I think we actually do it very naturally, simply because we are human,
and this is how people interact in real life too. Sometimes we do it
consciously - the way we have people at various companies that act as
go-betweens - but most of the time we do it just because humans are
all about social interactions and we don't even think about what we do
and why.

For example, you work mostly through Greg. I don't think either of you
*planned* it that way, but it's likely because you guys work well
together.

See what I'm saying? People are different. I'm not polite, and I get
upset easily but generally don't hold a grudge - I have these
explosive emails. And that works well for some people. And it probably
doesn't work well with you.

And you know what? That's fine. Not everybody had to get along or work
well with each other. But the fact that it doesn't work with you
doesn't make it "wrong".

This isn't all that different from working around language issues etc
by having certain people work as in-betweens on that front.

And where we differ is in thinking either side has to necessarily
change. You think people need to act "nicer". While I think it's
*natural* that people have different behavior - and different
expectations. We all have issues somewhere and don't all like each
other. There are certain people I refuse to work with, for example.
They may be good engineers, but they just aren't people I can work
with.

And hey, I don't actually think we've personally even had any
problems. And I realize that you may react very strongly and get
nervous about us having problems, but realistically, do you actually
expect to like all the other kernel engineers?

And equally importantly, not everybody has to like you, or necessarily
think they have to be liked by you. OK?

So as far as I'm concerned, the discussion is about "how to work
together DESPITE people being different". Not about trying to make
everybody please each other. Because I can pretty much guarantee that
I'll continue cursing. To me, the discussion would be about how to
work together despite these kinds of cultural differences, not about
"how do we make everybody nice and sing songs sound the campfire"

Do you think you might be interested in *that* kind of discussion
instead of the "you are abusing me" kind of discussion?

Because if you want me to "act professional", I can tell you that I'm
not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearign a bathrobe. The
same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to
buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and
backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because
THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all
kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their
normal urges in unnatural ways.

Linus

LOL! This girl Sarah is messing with wrong guy, never say Linus & Alan Cox what to do!
Have you ever said Jehovah what he should do ? 😉