[TriLUG] A sad comment on our culture

[Matt Flyer via TriLUG]

> On Mon, 12 Oct 2015 12:00:20 -0400
> Matt Whitlow via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>
> Who decides whether someone's acting like a F?cking idiot? Could they
> be wrong? Could an extra several hours of cooling off make them realize
> that there might be alternative, non-idiotic interpretations?
>
This subject reminded me of something I read earlier in the year:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel-developers/

>From the article:

"My culture is cursing": Linux kernel world is a hostile place—by design"

Keep it professional”

The Linux "workplace" is primarily a mailing list in which developers
discuss changes to the kernel. The criticism of Torvalds came yesterday
from developer Sarah Sharp, a software engineer at Intel who has made
numerous contributions to the Linux kernel in the past seven years. Sharp
wrote:

    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

Sharp's e-mail quoted statements from Torvalds such as "Have you guys
*seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should* scare you. He might
squish you without ever even noticing" and "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." (Torvalds' target is Linux kernel chief Greg Kroah-Hartman.)

On her blog, Sharp pointed to two other e-mails from Torvalds containing
language such as "Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!" and "Rafael, please don't
*ever* write that crap again."


Links to other articles in the series:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-why-he-isnt-nice-i-dont-care-about-you/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-responds-to-ars-about-diversity-niceness-in-open-source/

So, it would seem that this attitude or behavior descends from the top?