back to article Linus Torvalds threatens verbal assault on developers' pets

Linux Lord Linus Torvalds has made another colourful public statement, threatening developers' mothers and hamsters. The infamously-but-regretfully-profane Torvalds has seldom been afraid of dropping the f-bomb or venturing into less-than-politically-correct territory. His latest missive shows restraint, inasmuch as there's …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Stop the presses!

    It's so rare that Linus should send an email to LKML.. this event really does deserve to be a news article. We must get this game changing news out there right now!

    In other news; Developers post on mailing lists that are the central communication stream for their project.

    1. JimC

      Re: Stop the presses!

      Now look, its a law of the Medes and Persians that anything involving the alleged decease of hamsters is funny and newsworthy. Its otherwise known as the Starr principle.

  2. Ole Juul

    The news is that

    The infamously-but-regretfully-profane Torvalds didn't profanify this time.

  3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    But cleanup is good. It helps in testing!

    1. Tim Parker

      "But cleanup is good. It helps in testing!"

      True, true - but not when boat-loads of it keep turning up in release candidates :)

      1. The First Dave
        WTF?

        The point that _should_ have been made is that clean-up should not be necessary in any RC.

  4. ChrisM
    Happy

    Self Deprecating Humour

    The ability to laugh at yourself is the best sign of a person who is not liky to disappear up their own arse...

    Seems like Linus is safe from.becoming a marketdroid :)

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Self Deprecating Humour

      Yeah, but Linus trying to sell something would go like this, "Fucking buy my fucking product or I'll fucking kill your fucking mother and then fuck your fucking dead hamster.

      "And I fucking need a fucking NFSFFW icon."

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Chrism 06:26

    Telling someone else "Don't make me do X" isn't self-deprecating humour. Quite the opposite, in fact.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: @Chrism 06:26

      Yes, I agree, it's very much along the lines of "Don't make me mad, you wouldn't like me when I'm mad" type of threats.

      Bullying your staff, while it seems to be ok by many commenters on the Reg, in reality is never a good thing, nor acceptable.

      1. ChrisM

        Re: @Chrism 06:26

        Linus knows his faults (he has been up front with them in interviews) so he uses them to get people on side... no problem for me.

        Admittedly when he goes off on a rant he can come across as unprofessional but you can't doubt his track record... delivering a stable kernel that runs a large percentage of the world-facing web servers (86% comes to mind but happy to be corrected).

  6. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    In detail however...

    They are well down the RC trail. With that you don't submit trivial cosmetic patches. Linus is getting rather sick of wasting time checking a large number of the latter, meaning he can't concentrate on the former.

    Now what exactly would be your reaction to that situation? I doubt it would be "Oh bother! I guess I'll have to miss out on my entire social life this month."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In detail however...

      Poor management to make yourself the bottleneck and then to whine about.

      Central command and control doesn't work.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: In detail however...

        Micro managing manager in micro managing management shocker!!!!

      2. James Hughes 1

        Re: In detail however... @Edward K

        The problem Linus has, it appears, is that the people he is in charge of are in fact making his life more difficult, and he is forced to intervene.

        You are right, he shouldn't have to micro manage the team, but the evidence points to the fact he is HAVING to micro manage because the team isn't doing the 'right thing'. And in this case, cosmetic patches at RC5 are a big no-no. And because this is an OSS project with a majority of unpaid volunteers, you cannot sack people and get in decent replacements. You can however shout at them if necessary (and if they haven't got the clue from other means).

        OSS projects, like Linux, I think, will always suffer from this sort of issue. Linux itself, of course, is a great example of a successful OSS project. Probably solely down to the way Torvald works.

      3. Lars Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: In detail however...

        "Central command and control doesn't work."

        But then again "too many cooks spoil the broth".

    2. FrankAlphaXII
      Linux

      Re: In detail however...

      If I were Linus, I wouldn't be so kind about my developers wasting my time (for all intents and purposes). The profanity would be a little too much for most people though. What Linus needs to do is hire an old time First Sergeant as his official attack dog. When someone does something stupid and he doesn't have the time to get it taken care of himself, he'd have 1SG Pitbull to go lay down the law. <sarcasm>Politely and without dreaming of using a word like "fuck" of course </sarcasm>

      But anyway, a process question to anyone who may know: Isn't QA supposed to be doing cleanup for the candidates? Or is Linux Kernel development organized differently, like say so the Kernel Hackers have to do the bitchwork themselves without pawning it off on some QA volunteer or employee? I use GNU/Linux, in fact its my second favorite operating system after Windows 7, but Id be next to useless working on the Kernel as I've never been able to figure out what their QA team really does, how they go about doing their work or if they even have a QA team for the Kernel. I imagine they do, but its like Fight Club rules. Rule 1 is that you don't talk about Kernel QA.

      My main point though is why in the hell should the Project Manager and the Kernel's original author have to do a QA Sheriff's job and bitch people out for doing dumb things? Seems a misallocation of resources to me, given that this is the 2nd article in six months about him having to do something like this, even though Mr. Torvalds is notorious for being hands on.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: In detail however...

        Well to be fair, as much as Torvalds is a legend, why do people assume he's always right about these things? I've never had dealings with him myself but from hearing from people who have over the years he is the absolute worst example of the obstinate 'my way is the ONLY WAY TO DO THINGS' programmer. The kind of guy who you absolutely dread working with because he thinks there is only one way to skin a cat.

    3. Lars Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: In detail however...

      Yes, I believe most programmers know how easily a "last minute" trivial code change can fail. At least I have had that experience more than once. And if something makes you mad it's when you fuck up with something trivial.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Torvalds speaks... must... try... not... to falll.... ZZzzzzzzzzz.....

  8. Anonymous Coward 15
    Happy

    you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster

    Do they smell of elderberries?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      Re: you, your mother, and your deceased pet hamster

      I saw a response from Linus to LKML (re a git pull request) that did indeed mention the smell of elderberries.

      Someone was trying to sneak in some clean ups at the same time as a few regression fixes.

  9. easyk

    That should work.

    They should fall in line after that. If anything scares Linux kernel devs it is someone shouting at them on the internet.

  10. jonfr
    Boffin

    It is not just linux kernel

    It is not just linux kernel that is bloated. Most of other linux programs have become bloated and buggy. It has been a long progress. This is going to hamper development in Linux distros for a long time.

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