This is obviously a famous "Linus gets mad" moment. Honestly, I think Linus' comments, while intemperate, were not super-unreasonable, and I think the amount of flak he got for this was unfair. It's better in some sense if you can express anger at a collaborator for making a bad technical decision that makes things harder for other people without telling them SHUT THE FUCK UP, but that kind of emotion is also pretty natural when you're working on something that you passionately care about. If I had made this kind of error in kernel code, and gotten yelled at by Linus about it, I would've felt appropriately chastised (as Mauro appears to have here), and wouldn't have held it against Linus.
When I first read this, back in 2012, I thought Linus' was kind of a dick for being so insulting about it. With more experience I have more empathy for Linus' though -- sometimes developers will get hell bent on getting their PR through no matter how bad it is, and you almost have to be mean in order to get through to them. If you just pick at specific issues instead of saying "This is all bad, start again", sometimes you just waste a lot of time.
Also, to be fair I don't think I would know about this "We Do Not Break Userspace" rule if this hadn't been so famous at the time.
I guess his comment is acceptable because this is OSS and it's not like he can get fired over it.
In a past employer I've left a PR comment with a much less aggressive tone, and the PR author messaged me saying "your message is unprofessional". Granted, it wasn't my best moment, I had snapped. But if I wrote something like what Linus wrote, i'd be insta-fired.
Say what you will about the language, but I’ve come to appreciate how important it is to stick up for your users/customers, which is what Linus is doing here. It’s not ok to inconvenience them without an extraordinarily good reason to do so, and it absolutely is not ok to blame them.
I’m sure my reaction to this was different when I first read it many years ago. But now, I can strongly relate to the feeling behind these words.
> Btw, why pulseaudio is even trying to access a V4L2 control?
I would expect an audio application to take care of its own audio
business, and to not try to access other random Kernel APIs.
> In other words, only an application that handles video should be
using those controls, and as far as I know, pulseaudio is not a
such application. Or are it trying to do world domination?
Mauro's first response does seem a bit defensive, and reads like an attempt to justify his actions. It even feels a bit like an accusation against PulseAudio. I didn't know the exact context at the time, but now that I read the entire email, I think I'm getting why Linus was triggered.
9 comments of 75
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 25.1 ms ] threadAlso, to be fair I don't think I would know about this "We Do Not Break Userspace" rule if this hadn't been so famous at the time.
In a past employer I've left a PR comment with a much less aggressive tone, and the PR author messaged me saying "your message is unprofessional". Granted, it wasn't my best moment, I had snapped. But if I wrote something like what Linus wrote, i'd be insta-fired.
I’m sure my reaction to this was different when I first read it many years ago. But now, I can strongly relate to the feeling behind these words.
> In other words, only an application that handles video should be using those controls, and as far as I know, pulseaudio is not a such application. Or are it trying to do world domination?
Mauro's first response does seem a bit defensive, and reads like an attempt to justify his actions. It even feels a bit like an accusation against PulseAudio. I didn't know the exact context at the time, but now that I read the entire email, I think I'm getting why Linus was triggered.