“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

Like a certain other BDFL occasionally does?

It almost feels like hero worship.

You should try it some time. I know when I started doing it on here, my karma plummeted (real world analogue is “reputation” or social standing). But at least my conscience is clear.

Also, I'm a firm believer that very talented people can make very silly mistakes sometimes so you can't assume that someone has no value for your project just because their work or idea was disappointing on a single occasion.

When open source project leaders show aggression towards well-meaning people, it's a blatant display of arrogance and egomania.

Personal attacks are totally counterproductive, demeaning, and just mean. When they are public, it's especially way out of bounds and I have no respect for someone who does that, it shows a lack of emotional maturity and confidence.

There are definitely idiots in the world, but you don't go around calling them idiots, and certainly not in public. You don't even call their solutions 'idiotic'. You can say: "This approach is completely wrong, here's why and here are some alternatives" as a fairly callous-yet-acceptable response.

Being unduly cold or callous shows a lack of diplomacy, and as Engineers sometimes we are all guilty of that a little bit, but being specifically derogatory is just bad.

More on topic: congratulations to Guido for his contributions. None of us can never know how hard that was, and how much his contributions have helped so many.

Bravo Zulu.

I wish someone, in some respected 'institution', would give him some kind of medal, or the like.

Sure, it's not the same, but I am questioning myself, if for these roles, like the BDFLs we are talking about, it is not necessary to have a personal way that allows to handle all the pressure, still keeping being yourself, defending your vision of your life-work.

> is part of psycho-hygiene that allows the people to be able to continue to work and keep a certain distance.

It's also a culture of de-humanisation that allows abuse to continue unchecked. You find this culture in every patient safety scandal: winterborne view, mid-staffs, morcambe bay, cornwall, etc etc.

How? Which parts exactly?

> It's also a culture of de-humanisation

Again, how?

I find it creepy that without any specific examples provided you would report them.

Surely that creates a toxic culture.

My understanding is that the person being derided here isn't even a kernel developer.

  $ git shortlog -s --author Sievers --before 2012-07-06
     339  Kay Sievers

  $ git shortlog -s --author Sievers --after 2012-07-06
      12  Kay Sievers

It's interesting that making a complaint is seen as a negative thing to do: if there's no basis for the complaint no action is taken. Action is only taken - the compaint is only negative for the HCP - if the HCP has done something wrong.

> and seeing how the staff was venting, talking and joking about patients - once the doors were closed. I was very shocked,

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

Have a read of the reports I mentioned to see where this toxic culture leads.

Here's mid Staffs, but they all say the same: Mid Staffordshire: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/report-of-the-mid...

> During the course of both the first inquiry and the present there has been a constant refrain from those charged with managing, leading, overseeing or regulating the Trust’s provision of services that no cause for concern was drawn to their attention, or that no one spoke up about concerns

People need to speak up. And when they do speak up, they need to be listened to.

> Negative culture

> While it is clear that, in spite of the warning signs, the wider system did not react to the constant flow of information signalling cause for concern, those with the most clear and close responsibility for ensuring that a safe and good standard care was provided to patients in Stafford, namely the Board and other leaders within the Trust, failed to appreciate the enormity of what was happening, reacted too slowly, if at all, to some matters of concern of which they were aware, and downplayed the significance of others. In the first report, this was attributed in a large part to an engrained culture of tolerance of poor standards, a focus on finance and targets, denial of concerns, and an isolation from practice elsewhere. Nothing I have heard in this Inquiry suggests that this analysis was wrong. Indeed the evidence has only reinforced it.

The first point in the executive summary to the Winterbourne View report says this:

> The abuse revealed at Winterbourne View hospital was criminal. Staff whose job was to care for and help people instead routinely mistreated and abused them. Its management allowed a culture of abuse to flourish. Warning signs were not picked up or acted on by health or local authorities, and concerns raised by a whistleblower went unheeded. The fact that it took a television documentary to raise the alarm was itself a mark of failings in the system.

Staff didn't go to Winterbourne View and immediately start punching people in the face. The abuse started with a culture of dehumanising these people, and closing off the wards to prevent criticism.

> The Serious Case Review also sets out very clearly that for a substantial portion of the time in which Winterbourne View operated, families and other visitors were not allowed access to the wards or individual patients’ bedrooms. This meant there was very little opportunity for outsiders to observe daily living in the hospital and enabled a closed and punitive culture to develop on the top floor of the hospital. Patients had limited access to advocacy and complaints were not dealt with.

And then people keep wasting his time insisting on a bad idea

Cultural differences and all that. A good 'perkele' will be enough to get the point across in most cultures, even if some leave a bit disappointed.

If you call me a dickhead it's not a personal insult, call me fat it's getting there and when it's that [redacted] event when I was drunk a few weeks ago it's personal.

Anyone that find that Linus spray as "brutally personal" needs a cup of cement.

You and Linus and all his fanboys will no doubt say the kernel is better off without us.

I also prefer people who role model nonviolence for future developers.

Did you consider that her taking you apart and explaining it away with that excuse is just as much part of her "psycho-hygiene" that allows her to joke about the suffering and mental well-being of the human beings explicitly left in her care, without feeling bad about it?

I mean, what the hell? I trust my therapists not to laugh about my issues behind my back just like I trust the chef cooks at a restaurant not to spit on my food. Even if in most cases I won't be able to tell, it's a matter of trust and professionalism. I have to trust them on this. I HAVE to be able to honestly believe that a therapist or psychiatrist with a professional attitude and ethics will NOT joke about the most embarrassing issues I trust them with, the moment that I turn my back. Otherwise you can't do therapy with them.

Therefore whatever the hell this doctor thinks they're doing, is very unprofessional.

No matter the excuses they told you. I mean if you need this sort of disrespectful "psycho hygiene" for your mental well-being, first consider if you're even cut out for the job. Maybe look for other parts of the mental health sector, with patients whose problems you find less hilariously funny. Finally, if you really found your calling in one of the rather serious, dark corners of mental health care, the ones that are truly as taxing that merely working there requires counselling lest you burn out, then do exactly that. Vent at a counsellor. You can even joke at them because they're bound to a professional secrecy. Your colleagues aren't. They may be to your patients but not to you and that's the point. It needs to be separate.

And also VERY importantly, that counsellor will tell you when you actually cross the line and venting turns bad. In a social group, between colleagues, and a psychiatrist should know this, there is no such check. There's group pressure. Boundaries are tested. Someone says "maybe that's in bad taste", but next week two other people do it, and the someone doesn't want to keep nagging at colleagues, so the behaviour gets normalised. Boundaries have moved. Now you have a proper toxic environment. And then at some point, a young new 20-something staff-member joins, is shocked about the lack of professionalism. Now they have to be taken apart and explained why this behaviour is considered okay and is normalised. But says who?? There is no oversight, no checks, it's just social pressure and venting between colleagues. Who's there to say "this is enough and this is too much" and how are they qualified to make an objective call about it?

Just out of curiosity, what country's mental health care were you talking about? The quality of that varies widely enough that sure there's enough places in the world where if your story is the worst that is going on, it's probably good and at least it's not neglect or abuse. It's a matter of how high you put the bar. Regardless, a psychiatric doctor shouldn't actively rationalise this behaviour to newcomers.

Quickly getting back to the BDFL topic: There are many ways to handle pressure etc, and the ones that do not require you to occasionally "explode at someone", are in fact healthier and better for one's mental well-being.

[1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76935

For instance, taking a vacation. How many times has Guido stepped away from the position and letting whatever "vice" he had make the decisions for a while?

How long do you stay on the list? And doesn't this assume that every idea that person has is bad? What happens when some good ideas are caught in the net? (And what happens when someone goes off and grabs help to implement the bad idea, because you weren't there anymore to tell them again not to do it that way? Or worse, what if they come around to your point of view, but can no longer reach you?)

Wouldn't it be better to just say no, emphatically, and in a way that is clearly and unambiguously no? (I don't think it absolutely has to be a personal attack, but at least it's not passive-aggressively putting your ideas into a blackhole echo chamber...)

So, let's ask ourselves, is the term "dickhead" personal? Does it relate to a particular person? I don't see it relating to anything else, so I'm going to go with "yes" on that one.

But I could be missing something. What do you think it relates to?

Shocking because they were dehumanising or shocking because they were unexpected?

> and that were so shocking they could only be delivered behind closed doors.

My take is that it simply meant out of earshot of patients - and that's basic professionalism - not a sign of dehumanising patients.

They clearly weren't trying to hide their conversations from new staff.

> It's interesting that making a complaint is seen as a negative thing to do: if there's no basis for the complaint no action is taken.

I'd be extremely surprised if that's the case.

Even in the tech world complaints are treated seriously enough that people's lives are negatively impacted regardless of whether there is any basis.

> Have a read of the reports I mentioned to see where this toxic culture leads.

I've read your excerpts and can see no relation to the situation we are discussing.

Once again how does venting or making jokes about patients lead to a lower standard of care?

> The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

And the parent poster made absolutely no comment about poor standards of care. In fact the implication was clearly that there was a high standard.

> 2. of or concerning one's private life, relationships, and emotions rather than one's career or public life.

A much more relevant definition in this context don't you think? It's their public work being attacked, not their private life.

Have you ever worked or even associated with people in the blue collar world? Dickhead is tame enough to call your friends. Ever watched Gordon Ramsey? He might have better writers than most chefs but the abuse levels are industry wide.

In the case you talk about, I think it's easy and effective to put forward one's thoughts with simple, clear language that's formal enough for the public mailing list of one of the most important open source projects on the world, in all of computing history.

We tend to think in extremes: either be "PC with sugar-coated words" or insult people for their defects in public. No, there's a middleground where one can be an effective maintainer and still possess some humane virtues. Simple: you bring me some code, I find it dumb, idiotic, or what not; I have two options: I can tell you that the code is buggy/mistaken/&c and either reject it or request improvements (remembering also nobody, including me, is born an expert, and lives without mistakes); or I can tell you that you're dumb, tell you to fuck off, to shut the fuck up, and maybe insult your family. I'd guess you'd rather want to face the first way of communication.

If a person can not communicate, they should not be a core developer of anything anyways. Teamwork is 80% communication and 20% actual technical work.

Culture is so important that the Mid Staffs report include an entire chapter about it. You've said that venting is a way for staff to cope with a difficult job. That has already been called out as harmful: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

> Aspects of a negative culture have emerged at all levels of the NHS system. These include: a lack of consideration of risks to patients, defensiveness, looking inwards not outwards, secrecy, misplaced assumptions of trust, acceptance of poor standards and, above all, a failure to put the patient first in everything done. The emergence of such attitudes in otherwise caring and conscientious people may be a mechanism to cope with immense difficulties and challenges thrown up by their working lives.

They go on to say:

> A caring culture

> In addition to safety, healthcare needs to have a culture of caring, commitment and compassion. It requires the hard lessons of a Stafford to realise that it cannot be assumed that such a culture is shared by all who provide healthcare services to patients. What are the essential ingredients of such a culture? They surely include:

> Recognition of the need to empathise with patients and other service users;

[...]

> A commitment to draw concerns about patient safety and welfare to the attention of those who can address those concerns

I'd suggest that you can't empathise with a patient if you're being unpleasant about them behind closed doors.

My context is health care provided in English MH settings, usually in-patient, usually paid for by the NHS but not necessarily in an NHS hospital or with NHS staff.

> Once again how does venting or making jokes about patients lead to a lower standard of care?

Venting is an HCP placing blame for an event on the patient. This frames future incidents and the responses to those incidents. It makes it more acceptable and more likely for staff to use restrictive practices, and it de-emphasises the skills of de-escalation.

There is wide variation in the use of "prone restraint" in England. Some hospitals do not use it at all. Others use it frequently. Prone restraint can lead to death, so it's important that we understand this variation. One of the differences, but not the only difference, is the culture.

Imagine you're detained against your will in a mental health hospital.

Nurses Ann and Bob have the legal power to get a team of people to force you to the ground, hold you in prone or supine restraint, remove items of clothing to expose your buttocks, and inject a rapid tranquillisation medication. Again, all of this is against your will.

Nurse Ann says, behind closed doors during a team meeting: "Holy crap sheepmullet's anger has been out of control all this week. They wanted Section 17 leave for Christmas[1], but that wasn't granted, and I've got to tell them later and I know they're going to kick off again. They're just so angry at everything I say to them, and I know this is going to send them off the edge."

Nurse Bob says, behind closed doors during a team meeting: "sheepmullet has applied for section 17 leave. This was not granted. I have to tell them later that it has not been granted. I know that sheepmullet was really looking forward to Christmas with their family, and that they will be very disappointed that they're staying in hospital. I've struggled to talk to sheepmullet in a way that helps them contain their anger, and I'd like some advice about how to break this bad news in the best way."

There's not much that is actionable in a complaint from Nurse Ann. The comments aren't shocking. Ann's comments are likely milder than those mentioned in the original comment I responded to. But that approach is more likely to lead to prone or supine restraint, rapid tranquillisation, and a spell of seclusion. These are significant actions and should only be done as a last resort. Prone restraint has the potential to cause death.

Nurse Bob is making use of Soft Words from SafeWards[2], which is used in a range of MH settings, including "Secure Units"[2]. We're pretty sure this approach reduces the need for restraint, rapid tranq, and seclusion.

Imagine you get to chose who looks after you: do you pick Ann or Bob?

> Even in the tech world

Look at airline safety investigation where errors, even errors that kill, are not punished but are sources of learning. This should be true of healthcare, although it isn't always. The solution is not to avoid ever making complaints, but to keep making complaints and force the regulatory bodies to change their complaint handling.

We don't know what the comments were, and obviously if they're innocuous you don't report them. But, and this is really clear from all the investigations and research we have: you need to report disfunctional culture and leaders need to listen and act on those reports.

You seem to be saying that "shocking comments" aren't really shocking, and that non-shocking comments shouldn't be reported. I'd agree that you don't need to report stuff that doesn't need to be reported, but does that need to be said?

> Once again how does venting or making jokes about patients lead to a lower standard of care?

Look at what happened at Winterbourne View. People with intellectual disability were being tortured. There was a collapse in compassion. How did that start? How did we go from a 24 bed ATU providing care to a place where multiple staff felt it was okay to punch patients or trap them underneath chairs or pour mouthwash into their eyes? That started with staff who dehumanised their patients, and that dehumanisation starts with "shocking comments" delivered behind closed doors. A culture of abuse starts with staff thinking it's okay to badmouth patients just because they're behind a closed door. "Canteen culture" - staff sharing unacceptable views behind closed doors - is a widely recognised source of toxicity.

> In fact the implication was clearly that there was a high standard

That's what the midwives at Morecambe Bay said, that this was a good unit providing high quality care with the patient at the centre of everything they do. They were wrong. It was providing such poor care that babies were needlessly dying.

That's what the managers at Mid-Staffs said. We had no way of knowing care was so poor. Everything we had told us it was okay. They were wrong, they had a lot of indicators (including complaints from patients, relatives, and staff) to show that there had been a collapse in compassion in their hospital.

[1] apologies if Christmas means nothing to you. Substitute for something else significant: child's first day at school etc.

[2] http://www.safewards.net/managers/evidence

[3] these units work mostly with people who've been imprisoned or arrested after committing a criminal offence - they work with very ill people who are more likely to be violent. https://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/secure-care See also forensic services: http://www.nhsconfed.org/~/media/Confederation/Files/Publica...

Well, you get physical well-being for free on Internet discussions. For the rest, I don't know. People get triggered over harmless shit so often, I just shake my head for such stupidity. You mentioned spiritual well-being. I contradict and say that if I disrespect your religion (not you as a person) and you get triggered by it (love that word) it's entirely your problem.

But my Internet communication experiences also include games, so these words are not even the worst you could hear. With that in mind, the above pretty much applies all the time.

I'm right there with you that if someone triggers themselves over my words, the triggered person is responsible for how they react/respond to it. I also choose to share in the responsibility because whether I intended for that outcome or not, it still happened as a result of someone's personal state encountering my words/actions. I aim to respond compassionately to them and hopefully empathize with where they're at in a way that invites healing around both them triggering in the moment and whatever they're carrying from the past. I view this as my responsibility because I've learned how to heal around several of my own issues and wish to help others learn how to heal themselves.

By doing so, I can contribute to cultures in ways that promote wellbeing beyond the context of whatever we're coming together to do.

Also, Linus's behavior isn't the only way to operate and his goals can be met in other ways. Him doing this since 1991 doesn't necessarily mean it's a sustainable way to be for him... It simply means his behavior doesn't outweigh the usefulness of his contributions, yet.

Sure, maybe egos are bruised, but nobody's contribution or community standing is actually harmed by "fuck off and die."

A person who is banned, on the other hand, has no choice but to basically "fuck off and die." You think you're making the board more polite, but actually you just told that guy overtly through a policy enforcement action that his ideas or person are so bad that the ideas are not worth reviewing anymore.

OK, I agree with you too, in principle at least, I would rather not be on the receiving end of the "fuck off and die" and I wholeheartedly agree there's a nicer way to say it. But I hope I'm being clear, that personally, I'd really have rather you just told me to fuck off and die.

The block list was your idea now, and I think I want to dwell on it, because I don't agree with the premise that there are toxic people to merit the existence of a block list.

> And then people keep wasting his time insisting on a bad idea

You said it yourself, "one of the most important open source projects in the world" – Linus is much more successful than you or I, so we can afford to be charitable with our words and our time. I'll defer to reserve judgement on Linus because right now we're still talking about how you handle people with bad ideas. I want to say my feeling that you must not do it with a block list.

The banned person is no longer able to provide any further benefit to the group. Maybe you have an actual toxic person and you find yourself in a position to ban them, ok go ahead and do it. I hope you won't misuse this authority to ban someone unfairly whose ideas are simply very bad.

But let's say you ban someone and actually misjudged, and it wasn't really the person that was toxic, just the idea; the contributor with bad personality or ideas can probably still be rehabilitated in the group! But first they must admit their mistake, or at least receive a stern admonishment.

So let's assume, charitably for Linus again, that it was actually a toxic idea that provoked the "fuck off and die." I prefer not to admit that there can be any toxic people until it's absolutely necessary. Maybe he is toxic. I am not in a position to ban, block, or kick him, (or anyone else,) from anything. So I'm not sure it could matter if I was to come to the conclusion that he was toxic personally, obviously you're free to argue that or not.

All I'm saying is that once you admit that both people and ideas can be toxic, it's very easy to make this mistake. So I'd prefer to grant that people are not toxic as a rule until it's a proven fact that simply can't be discarded.

I don't agree that we were ever talking about bad people until you introduced the notion, and the conversation does not need to be about Linus, but if it was... he is not accused of chastising bad people, he's chastising people with bad ideas. You suggested that he filter them out if they persist, and I basically equated that kind of filtering as like a ban, that I would never use as a community leader.

I'm sorry internet stranger, but I don't feel confident in (your or my) ability to effectively distinguish objectively between a contributor who is (trollish, insistent, selfish etc)... vs one who is being (persistent, uncompromising, a bit stubborn, maybe snarky once in a while, or playing devil's advocate for argumentative purposes, etc.)

Those adjectives can convey opposite subjective opinions in the same objective reality, and the side you choose to be on may depend on simply whether you like the person or not. Is it a ban-worthy offense or is it exhibiting decisive leadership qualities? Well I think that probably depends on whether or not you'd be the one laughing if I said "fuck off and die" just one more time in this thread. You're arguing in good faith but I still disagree with your conclusion.

We're arguing a hypothetical so I'm not sure either of us will convince the other of anything, but here's my piece.

Five comments ago, you suggested filtering people who annoy you with their persistent bad ideas in a professional setting, and I've done all I can to argue that it's not a strategy that will ever work for Linus, and it's not a good strategy for either me or you, you should not consider it.

"Go to HR" is the strategy for dealing with bad people in a professional setting.

If someone's ideas are bad, you should not exile them from the community for it, obviously. If you're serious about leading in a community, ask yourself if you'd be willing to "walk this person down to HR" before you consider waving around a ban hammer or filtering them out and ghosting, because that's exactly like what you're doing.

Linus is not leaving LKML, and that's another topic. You'll have to filter his mails if you find him offensive and you're on the LKML, let me know how that goes for you.

You could also try to read past the insult, and divine the point that was intended to be heard, and take it to heart.

An insult from Linus is like a blessing. He just doesn't give them to anyone. But I'm not here defending Linus.

I'm not on the LKML and most probably won't ever be. But I generally say a word or two about Torvalds' behaviour because he is a "role model" for upcoming (and current) F/OSS maintainers, and I doubt he is a good one for these growing communities to be healthy places. If he is fine, and his peers are fine, I don't actually care about them as long as they are pushing bugfixes to the kernel.