this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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It's possible to acknowledge Torvalds as both a technical leader and overall smart guy, as well as acknowledging his poor treatment of people and generally being an asshole. A person can be both of those things.
Sure, I never said otherwise, but the problem is usually that people are so blinded by his being a tech leader that they excuse his behavior. Seriously, imagine this was literally anybody else, they'd get booted from their position faster than you can say "motherfucker"
There is nothing wrong with treating people like he does. It's not a kindergarten. If you do something stupid (like try to sneak in bad code before the cutoff) you will be called on it and publicly shamed.
You know what is shame for? For people to have incentive to learn on their mistakes.
Cuddling everyone and everywhere is enabling enshittification.
Yeah, that's what I mean. It's possible to acknowledge his genius as well as call out his shitty behavior. We can and should do both.
He's just guarding the fort. I'd rather he not be a pushover.
You can guard the fort effectively without being an asshole. I admire Torvalds for his work, but his behavior is still awful.
The world sits on his shoulders and there are people actively trying to dismantle his work. He has every right to me an asshole.
I didn't see that in the business world. Assholes who were right did fine. Assholes who were wrong got booted. Nice guys that were wrong got promoted to management.
Definitely not to excuse it, but I think this is a not uncommon pattern in tech leaders. I recall hearing stories of profanity-laden rants to employees about their bad code by both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs during their leadership of Microsoft and Apple. It's inexcusable behavior no matter when or where it occurs, but I don't think Linus Torvalds is a unique case for getting a pass.
It's not a position per se, right? You can do your own development
Indeed but you see constant comments condoning or even praising his shitty behaviour, like creating a popular kernel somehow gives him the right to be an arsehole.
I would like to see more "I'm glad he made Linux but I wish he wouldn't be so constantly abusive" and less "haha he got em again! What a good rant! You're the best Linus!".
I think "creating a popular kernel" is significantly downplaying his creation. Almost all of the web runs on the Linux kernel and I don't mean just web servers but also DNS servers and routers. Every android phone uses Linux. Most embedded devices run Linux. Anything "smart" is likely to run on Linux. If your car has anything resembling an operating system it's probably running Linux.
He didn't create a popular kernel, he created a kernel that runs the world you live in.
He's definitely done a huge amount of work and been very successful... But if he hadn't there's a strong chance someone else would have. So it's not like without Torvalds the web would all be running on Windows. We'd probably be using FreeBSD or something.
Or maybe Plan 9! Who knows, we might have ended up in a better state. Or worse. I doubt we wouldn't have anything though. There are too many nerds who like writing OSes for fun.
This is a terrible take. If Linus didn't exist, open source would be light years behind its current scope.
There are many sectors that have been completely captured by the "bad guys". Luckily, operating systems aren't one of them.
How do you know?
If you want to look in the operating system space, Linux holds the highest share of operating systems that aren't Windows or MacOS. And that share is maybe 3% if you isolate it to just PC gamers, and much lower when you include general computer usage.
Could one of the BSD variants have ended up in the same position? Maybe, but probably not. Linux is basically a unicorn where circumstances lined up perfectly for it to become as big as it is today.
As much as it sucks to admit, the Linux kernel would not be where it is today without the additional expertise and man-hours donated by companies. That never would have happened if it weren't open-source, collaborative, and free for commercial use. It also happened to exist in a situation where the cost-benefit analysis meant it was more worthwhile to hire people to improve the Linux kernel, than it would have been to create a kernel in-house or license one from a vendor.
Why not?
It feels like you're ignoring network effects here. If Linux didn't exist then something else (e.g. FreeBSD) would be much more popular and would be targeted by companies instead.
I guess I hadn't seen so many people jumping to his defense on these things. Until reading the comments in this thread. Damn, son.
That being said, I've never read too far into the drama around Linus's behavior, and I don't care to. I understand he's overly abrasive, and he has taken steps to remedy it, but I can also understand where you'd end up lacking empathy after years and years of handling PRs (and some have mentioned that he typically only goes off on people who are otherwise themselves being obnoxious--still not a good reason, but I can empathize).
I guess I hope we can treat Linus like a human, neither deifying nor demonizing him. Praise him for his accomplishments, and call him out when he's unreasonably being a dick. It's not good for anyone to normalize shitty behavior, least of all for Linus.
Turns out Linus stans are also assholes – who would have guessed?