Re: Linus is on a powertrip..

Nathan Hand (nathanh@chirp.com.au)
Wed, 30 Sep 1998 10:15:57 +1000 (EST)


On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Aaron Tiensivu wrote:

> > This is _exactly_ the same thing that made me hate vger when it came to
> > networking patches. And I'm going to ask David once again to just shut
> > vger down, because these problems keep on happening.
> >
> > Linus
>
> You do realize that your powertrip lately is really hurting Linux development.
> Linux has been getting a bunch of good press lately (finally) but if this
> ego/head-in-sand/etc trend continues.. 2.2 will never go out the door and we'll
> have this buggy heap called 2.1 still around. 2.1 has been drawn out too long
> and people are bailing ship left and right over stupid arguements.
>
> Jitterbug flopped.. vger is now flopping.. you've already lost some damn good
> IDE coders, and I'm sure you're going to lose more at this rate.
>
> I hate writing a message sounding like this but I think it should be said.

Try also so see this from Linus's point of view. He it ultimately
responsible for faults in the kernel, because he's the one who is
designated "patch reviewer" for everything placed in the official
kernel tree. The problems aren't *really* his fault, but he takes
a lot of the responsibility on his shoulders, and people do point
fingers at Linus when bad patches get in.

Linus might seem snappy, but if I received a 700k patch with some
note saying "this should work", I'd ask for an explanation too! I
would also get peeved if people start *complaining* that I wasn't
matching the standards they expect: this is Linus's baby and he's
under no obligation to take *any* patches that don't suit him. He
is a benevolent dictator, not an omnipotent benefactor.

So if everyone would just calm down, relieve some pressure off of
the dictator's shoulder, and remember that Linus is reasonable if
given half the chance, so if he seems unreasonable to you then it
is likely that *you* have done something unreasonable to him.

If anyone is fuming under the hood, take the simple advice that a
brief 48 hour departure from the argument makes everything seem a
whole lot more trivial, and then it's often easier to see exactly
how silly the whole argument was in the first place.

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/