Despite being a passionate and fiery guy himself, Linus has a lot of charisma and social skills too. Open source is built on the work of thousands but I think people underestimate how lucky we are that one of the most prominent figures in opensource isn't a brilliant but anti social asshole. We need to protect Linus at all costs, he does a lot for keeping things on track. EDIT: As some have pointed out and I failed to properly acknowledge in my phrasing above Linus was and is still capable of being a very strongwilled/hardheaded/abrasive person. But as others have also pointed out, and I'd tend to agree, he has certainly made a concerted effort to work on people management/social skills for the betterment of the community. I haven't met Linus but he reminds me of people I know who I'd describe as "caring/nice assholes" IE: abrasive and blunt but with good intentions and a willingness to learn and engage productively with other people even if this involves a degree of self criticism and reflection. I should have made it clear that I am comparing this with some other infamous/famous brilliant minds that seemed almost impossible to work with.
@FineWine-v4.0 yes, I completely agree and didn't say otherwise. Merely some brilliant people limit their own potential because of their lack of tact when dealing with others. Emphasis on some. What I should have emphasised more is that, as mentioned by another reply above, Linus has made a clear and concerted effort to improve his personal social skills for the betterment of the community.
He is spot on. It's the people that don't read or follow guidelines or just have their own ideas that can downright steer the ship into oblivion in a matter of few small commits. Having rules is very important. Think of a great maintainer as a great forum moderator. If they notice stuff off-topic they must either close or ban or move the discussion elsewhere. Even posting similar bugs into a bug thread must instead go into a separate bug discussion, because in a bug thread you can only post info or discuss about the primary post of the reported bug. Then you must ban those that make too many duplicates ... and so and so and so ...
The problem with getting new maintainers for the Linux kernel is barrier to entry. Having code reviews and patches go through mailing lists without any kind of CI is just an incredibly repetitive and frictionful experience. There are ways to improve this, and open source tooling around this exists, the project needs to make a move.
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. The reason for missing maintainers is that there's not enough selection. I would love to start on the project and I have a lot of experience as software engineer, but still: Finding a starting point without "issues" and "good first" suggestions, too tiring! The project needs to invest into newbies in my opinion.
>thinks there is no CI. Every patch you post is tested. The quality of the kernel is maintained precisely because it filters out stupids like you who can't put the bare minimum effort into learning.
And, as a "technically minded" end-user, it's really difficult to actually bring issues to the maintainers because of this similar antiquity. You have to locate one of dozens of git repos that exist purely for "issue tracking" maintained by maintainers who do nothing but moderate and troubleshoot issues that would be fixed had the Linux kernel demanded CI, automated testing, etc. All of that, while parsing and maintaining an archaic version of C! Linux has a lot to do to adapt itself for the future of software development.
While I understand the sentiment I feel like this barrier also protectes the project from hordes of unexperienced developers that want to leave their stamp on Linux without being willing to invest the necessary focus, patience and seriousness.
Whether your project is open source or commercial, you really need to cherish your maintainers enthusiastically. I left Google shortly after finding out that there was a de facto "no promotion for maintenance" policy. (I was a tester, not a maintainer, BTW.)
I don't think so. I've been programming since 1983. People see things differently. Not everything can be taught to get people to see things the way they should. Take for example lots of people think having many people and different views is a good thing. Not always. Some times there is a right way and simply everything else is the wrong way. The only way that matters in such a case is the right way. Having many people just leads to explaining the same thing over and over and over again. So you pick an apprentice. How long will it be before you realize he or she was he wrong one to pick. Well pick 10 apprentices and teach all of them may one will come out right. Maybe, then you spend more time teaching apprentices than doing the work you should. The fact is this is what school is for and well schools are failing at the job they should be doing. Add to that you have this entire hand holding garbage going on. By that I means stuff like TDD. TDD is purely there to hold the hands of the less than mediocre programmers. They need programmers but they don't have enough good ones. So they came up with methods to hold the hands of the bad ones. Think about it this way. You create a multimeter and then you create another one to test the other your are building along side it. Neither of them have ever been calibrated so in the end you have two uncalibrated mulit-meters. If you watch youtube you can find people doing TDD demos. And some how they mange to mess up the test code. So then what are they going to start writing more test code to test the test code. You probably think that well they must not be very experience programmers. Well only problem is Uncle "Bob" is also one of those people who made bad test code in his video. So no you can't teach it.
@@GRHmedia that was a very long and very roundabout way to get to where you did. Which was ultimately just railing against modern software development practices. But as mentioned in the video, kernel maintainers aren't necessarily programmers. They are people who work with people as their primary skill, and look at code as a secondary. Can it be taught? Absolutely it can be. You said so yourself. It's what schools should be teaching. But since they aren't, or aren't to your standard, it's absolutely up to the people with the experience to teach the inexperienced.
@@praecorloth I disagree that it can be taught. It's a personality thing and not a skill that can be learned. Maintainers need to be rigid and structure-driven, otherwise their role is not going to work. If at all, you can teach best practices how to communicate in a less abrasive way, even when dealing with most annoying people and avoid useless discussions that are ultimately just a waste of time. However, you cannot teach how to be a good maintainer that is actually preserving quality and rejects shitty code, you already need that mindset in the first place.
@@praecorloth Maintainers need to be programmers, even highly experienced ones: they need to review the code of others, and act as a gatekeeper to their module, so the level of maintainability stays as high as possible. Maintaining a project is a constant battle against code rot, because even with all very experienced contributors, the natural thing to happen is that contributors make their feature work, and hack its integration into the other related parts, because they don't know about and understand the ideas of all of the abstractions everyone has ever invented in that part of the codebase.
I am high-key worried about what will happen to the Linux kernel if anything ever happens to Linus. I'm really worried that everything will all just get corrupted and atrophy.
I think that chance is very very small. On the one hand there are a lot of interests in steering the kernel in a certain direction on the other hand there are even more interests in keeping the kernel in a healthy state that can be used by many generations of distributions to come. After all the vast majority of our computing power is running with a Linux kernel so having this core tool for humankind go all funny because of commercial or political interests is highly unlikely simply because as humans we cannot afford to do so. Should Linus be looking at how to ensure that when he looses the ability to steer the kernel project it ends up being in good hands and able to continue for sure. But even if he does not it is highly likely that the community will take up the challenge and will keep this project ticking along for the simple reason that the many billion and even trillion dollar companies that are heavily invested in Linux based system must ensure that they continue to have this basic building block to continue to build their business on.
@@RobCoops good point. We just need to beware of supervillains like Dr. Evil who want to insert their malware into the kernel for one million dollars. 🤌
most of the kernel code is very complex and undocumented. Coupled with the fact that changes are made through mailing lists, I don't think he will find anyone for the job any time soon until he gets with the times.
This is from Linus' keynote at The Linux Foundation from 2 months ago. The host is Dirk Hohndel, the head of the open source program office at Verizon.
Yes, people are hard, and the Kernel must be protected. An influx of enthusiasm and productivity may sound good, but, it would all crash without moderation, and revue from maintainers. Even my best young inovators often write risky code. Only time and experience fixes this trait..
@@aaalynch5706 No what I mean is that maintaining the things to remain in order/ stable is always difficult. Adding new randomness(code etc) is easier into the system.
If you are the guy in the front row holding your camera up in the air completely oblivious to your surroundings; maybe skipping this lecture and watching it on TH-cam would have been a better option.
So proud of you Torvalds, your communication to humans and computers alike have grown and soared, though developers still make up secret languages to code, I understand because of you alone, why certain steps may be necessary for adaptation into the coming of a new era. You as well as the GNU foundation inspire me to keep trying in all of life's endeavors. Thanks for being awesome!~
According to Wikipedia Linus gets paid to work on the kernel. I don't know the economic situation for most people working on the kernel, especially maintainers. I don't really know that ecosystem. But if you expect skilled people to work for free in this day and age, you live in a fairy-tale world. People need to eat, want to have income so they can live decently without struggling. Making this about ethics and morals of single developers and depoliticizing the issue is dumb.
Core maintainers are paid by the Linux Foundation just as Linus is. And they are paid a more than livable wage. The problem isn’t with money, the problem is finding people competent enough to have such an important job, while also being willing to fit themselves into the archaic, nasty mess that is the kernel development mailing lists and git repos.
I don't think its a relationship issue, it's a technical one. It's helped by the introduction of Rust into the kernel, but the fact a monolithic kernel like Linux is incredibly hard to maintain without serious manpower. It also makes managing the complex and busy git history of Linux very hard to do without relying on a handful of super-developers (who Linus claims you don't need to be to maintain the kernel, but with the thousands of commits, branches, and hardware required, you need to be) because any more than the few that can be easily managed within a mailing list quickly spirals out of control and into bikeshedding (or whatever corpo term for it). The kernel was originally, and still is, designed around sending commits and patches to a single developer, and not the idea that multiple systems can be maintained by distinct teams. It's only barely working for Linux because it has so many stakeholders and contributors, but under most conditions this kind of developer system is unsustainable.
I've worked in software maintenance, for a multinational company. It was boring at times, a lot of meetings. But I also had the best laughs of my life reading production code written by morons.
When Torvalds is gone, Linux will quite likely go down the drain unless someone else steps in with the same pit bull attitude. Then it will be alive just a little longer.
By pit bull attitude do you mean being a dick? If so, what a ridiculous take. You can tell people they're wrong or their code isn't good without being a dick. Shit, even Linus himself thinks it's wrong or else he wouldn't have gone to anger management treatment.
It needs to automated usind ChatGPT (when ChatGPT i a little bit better, maybe version 5?). Then NOBODY will be able to decide what is good but ChatGPT.
It doesn’t help that instruction sets are starting to change every single generation now, which means every two years you’re having to learn a new way of doing things, plus the addition of new ISA’s being added every year as well. So tiresome having to learn new ISA’s constantly, two years you’re just finally getting a true grasp on the last ISA.
Well it really depends on what you do. I've been working with embedded devices for a long time and almost never had to use assembly. A lot of the Linux assembly code has been rewritten to C as well.
🤔 hear description of an architect an architect sees the whole picture and find best (overall) solution, has to communicate with lot of people (stakeholders from time to time), also has experience and understand experts concepts and work without getting lost in the details 🤔 maybe using the correct term will help to solve the problem what you need are architects, strong and dedicated people are all around the place
02:48 - It's incredibly frustrating to see someone blocking the view by raising their phone right in front of Linus's face during such an important discussion. We need to remember the basic etiquette of being in an audience, respecting both the speaker and those around us who are trying to engage.
Well, the audio was not affected by this, so the main part of the 'important discussion' could still be heared by everyone. What I think I want to say ... do not overdramatise things.
@@psychosomatic7035part of the issue is the placement of the camera. It should have been elevated to be above the crowd. This would then not even have been an issue.
The linux ethos needs a culture swing. Lots of weird attempted gatekeeping and also people who do definitely know a lot but they act like dicks to people who are very competent but newer and make "noob" mistakes and honstly, most of the linux devs I've seen are average at best.. I dont mean average in terms of what you will see in corporations but average as in programmers as a whole. Average is still pretty decent tbh, but a lot of these guys act like they are gods gift in one way or another. Its terribly cringe.
Right as soon as I entered the computer science department at my university many years ago it was just constant smuggery and elitism. They say a part of maturing is being able to see yourself in others. I saw myself in them and hated it. I think what you're describing is true in the computer science field in general not just "linux devs".
Linus is right, but ironically so. The Linux code isn't the issue, the Linux *community* is the problem. Linus, himself, is notoriously hard to deal with. Who wants to contribute when you are just going to get yelled at for it!? Then again, the other side of the coin is also true. A bad contribution is arguably worse than not contributing at all.
It's also just difficult for a new contributor to get their patches accepted, as far as I know. (I'm not a kernel contributor.) I think they should be working on lowering the barrier to entry for contribution, while maintaining the high standards for code quality. Probably more CI and automated checks are needed: it's really easy to write bad C code, and in any language, it's really easy to just make an exception in this abstraction for your feature. It would be nice if people could check and fix these before their patches even hit the mailing lists.
@@szaszm_CI is not superior to human error checking due to the lack of reasoning. As for the quality of kernel contributions i really think rust should be favored. It is more robust against typical errors in programming.
I know I am supposed to worship Linus, and I do think he is a brilliant dude - but he has the same problem that the vast majority of the old guys in IT have, which is that they have not made a concerted effort to bring in the new generation. I would love to be a Linux kernel maintainer, but the information is so scattered, so hard to decipher, often out of date, essentially expects you to pull information out of thin air. When you try to be humble, and admit that you just don’t know, you get told to figure it out and that nobody’s gonna spoonfeed you information. I’m sorry, how were you all trained to begin with? You either had a mentor or more time to figure it out. Not to mention the technology was simpler back then - which is something they don’t like to admit. When they retire or die off, there’s not gonna be very many people to replace them and they are gonna have no one to blame but themselves. The few people that will be able to replace them work their asses off and will probably still have to rewrite a lot of stuff from scratch because they will have not gotten the context from anybody.
Maybe it comes down to the fact that most programmers, like mathematicians, have terrible social skills, which is why they are programmers; they just want to sit and program and mind their own business, and then die. They don't want to communicate, which explains their aversion to writing understandable documentation and mentoring the youth. Programming has an isolated, autodidactic culture around it, which makes it self-defeating. It's something that needs to change, but it won't come from the aforementioned group; so I am happy that people like you can see this, which means it's not hopeless.
As a software developer, the whole Linux Kernel thing looks rocket science to me. There’s no open forum which is beginner friendly and appreciate effort where I can learn something. Sure, you can look at the source code and understand but there are two problems- Linux kernel is huge and second is Hardware related code is completely alien to me. Really what we need is not make Linux Kernel such a huge thing. Part of the problem is Linus himself
@@FainTMako Well clearly you're unaware of the different specializations in EE so let me enlighten you. There is no generic EE anymore, or so I'm told. Power - self explanatory Computers and Digital - semiconductor doping, analog and discrete controls, aka you design a MIPS processor at the transistor level before your undergrad is over. I2C, CAN, Modbus, etc. Signals - EMF manipulation, modulation, ADC, DAC, PSK, etc Those are the ones I remember. So yeah, I could do kernel maintenance, its just that I doubt it pays as well as my current job.
do you mean pay as in monetary compensation? i think you need to do some research first. Also, I'm a GG with specialisation in Computers and Analogue. Hahaha
@@xokelis0015 When your explanation includes "self explanatory", you aren't doing a great job at explaining. And why would you think you have any idea how to maintain a giant codebase when that's utterly unrelated to EE? If you think the "computer and digital" part of EE is related to being a maintainer, then boy are you unqualified.
You don't fork the kernel; you clone it, patch it, and email the changes to the maintainers via the mailing list. Believe it or not, that is git's envisioned workflow! 😆
I can't help but wonder if Kernel maintenance is something that can be handed off to a newly-fomed consortium. It could possibly be made up by IBM, Red Hat, Canonical and (regretfully) Micro$oft.
No. IBM and Microsoft had their chance to build their own unix systems in the 80s and 90s, and failed at it. IBM owns redhat now, so that's just IBM and IBM, and canonical is dog shit at software lately. They should not have control over how the Linux kernel is built, because Linux is unix for the masses by the masses. I'd much rather see a global group of universities with computer science divisions take over maintainership of the kernel.
I'm sure creating a highly toxic and ego fueled environment has nothing to do with the low appeal of it, Linus. I'm sure talking to your most valuable assets like they're the scum of the earth is not a "developer lacking social skills" problem.
Nothing screams 'toxxxic' like people flailing and whining about their hurt egos and being underappreciated (source; self). The community has attitude issues for sure, its just not where people conveniently want it to be
Obviously you don't understand the job. Maintaining large amount of code is pure hell, let alone the code that runs on billions of devices. Linus is in fact a great example of great OS leader. Linux would be impossible without him.
Have you ever been in the role of maintaining software projects with a bunch of people that just happen to be part of the "team"? It just needs a few people and constant discussions about bad practices that other people consider to be good ideas in order to ask yourself why you even bother. If you don't stop such people, the project's quality will inevitably suffer. It's one of the reason why you find such horrible code bases in many companies, because of people who just came in, took a dump on everything, left again and nobody dares or bothers to clean up any mess that was done before.
Sadly, that’s true. With all due respect to Linus and great appreciation to his historical work. What a self-respecting developer on earth would work with such a person lacking basic politeness in his interactions with colleagues? Lots of talented people will stay away from such unhealthy work atmosphere.
Linus: "The above code is sh*t, and it generates shit code. It looks bad, and there’s no reason for it." Jeez, I wonder why people aren't eager to work on this project in their spare time.
It's draining and stressful, and Linus personally treats them like shit in many well-documented cases. Why would anyone start doing it? Why would anyone keep doing it?
ill take the job danke-you, danke-you for having me in the team, i once led a minekrift server which makes me suitable as a leader, linux sebastian is my idol, i dont know how you got his name wrong in the title, but i know better
under my leadership every dev will receive a shipment of 60 guava energy drinks a month (thats 2 a day, we work every day to make it better, and it boosts efficiency and tastes good)
@@kippers12isOG It's a little bombastic, but it's not that far from the truth in that many skilled developers are not in a position to opt in to performing a taxing and mission-critical role for zero compensation.
@@curious_banda Nobody said "everyone is doing it for free". I'm saying not everyone is getting paid: many skilled developers are in the position that they're contributing to the kernel without getting paid -- and many are finding that they can not continue.
@@ChrisStavros Many is a good chunk of everyone. And many are paid. So idk which circlejerk you are in. The only kernel devs doing it for free are those who are learning, are fired, want to build up some reputation, or few cases just because they like it in which case monetary discussion doesn't matter.
There's a theory of gender archetypes saying men are Producers of stuff and women are Keepers of stuff. Thus I think females make better maintainers than Males. Us men, we Like to get a job done and then Check Out, chill Out and Go to another place and start Something new. Maintaining a codebase ist quite the opposite of that.
My goodness you are too far gone aren't you. Go outside and touch grass mate. The only gendershite I've ever heard is that in theory, females make for better QA candidates as there is a theory going around that women can notice small changes or inconsistenties better. Mind you, only QA and nothing more. But it is just that, a theory and nothing else. Go get your gender swap surgery if you're too afraid to be a man and get the hell out of this comment section bruv.
![Chris Langan - The Interview THEY Didn't Want You To See - CTMU [Full Version; Timestamps]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9miVG2xT5jY/mqdefault.jpg)
I always appreciate Linus’ honesty
It made me chuckle that when he said 'people are hard' that someone in the front row decides it's a perfect time to pull out their phone..
Despite being a passionate and fiery guy himself, Linus has a lot of charisma and social skills too. Open source is built on the work of thousands but I think people underestimate how lucky we are that one of the most prominent figures in opensource isn't a brilliant but anti social asshole. We need to protect Linus at all costs, he does a lot for keeping things on track.
EDIT:
As some have pointed out and I failed to properly acknowledge in my phrasing above Linus was and is still capable of being a very strongwilled/hardheaded/abrasive person. But as others have also pointed out, and I'd tend to agree, he has certainly made a concerted effort to work on people management/social skills for the betterment of the community.
I haven't met Linus but he reminds me of people I know who I'd describe as "caring/nice assholes" IE: abrasive and blunt but with good intentions and a willingness to learn and engage productively with other people even if this involves a degree of self criticism and reflection. I should have made it clear that I am comparing this with some other infamous/famous brilliant minds that seemed almost impossible to work with.
He has said it's something he has been working on these past years
Brilliant != anti-social
Linus was infamous for his asshole takes. Linux succeeded anyways.
@FineWine-v4.0 yes, I completely agree and didn't say otherwise. Merely some brilliant people limit their own potential because of their lack of tact when dealing with others. Emphasis on some. What I should have emphasised more is that, as mentioned by another reply above, Linus has made a clear and concerted effort to improve his personal social skills for the betterment of the community.
He is spot on.
It's the people that don't read or follow guidelines or just have their own ideas that can downright steer the ship into oblivion in a matter of few small commits.
Having rules is very important.
Think of a great maintainer as a great forum moderator.
If they notice stuff off-topic they must either close or ban or move the discussion elsewhere.
Even posting similar bugs into a bug thread must instead go into a separate bug discussion, because in a bug thread you can only post info or discuss about the primary post of the reported bug.
Then you must ban those that make too many duplicates ... and so and so and so ...
The problem with getting new maintainers for the Linux kernel is barrier to entry. Having code reviews and patches go through mailing lists without any kind of CI is just an incredibly repetitive and frictionful experience. There are ways to improve this, and open source tooling around this exists, the project needs to make a move.
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. The reason for missing maintainers is that there's not enough selection. I would love to start on the project and I have a lot of experience as software engineer, but still: Finding a starting point without "issues" and "good first" suggestions, too tiring! The project needs to invest into newbies in my opinion.
>thinks there is no CI.
Every patch you post is tested.
The quality of the kernel is maintained precisely because it filters out stupids like you who can't put the bare minimum effort into learning.
And, as a "technically minded" end-user, it's really difficult to actually bring issues to the maintainers because of this similar antiquity. You have to locate one of dozens of git repos that exist purely for "issue tracking" maintained by maintainers who do nothing but moderate and troubleshoot issues that would be fixed had the Linux kernel demanded CI, automated testing, etc.
All of that, while parsing and maintaining an archaic version of C! Linux has a lot to do to adapt itself for the future of software development.
mailing lists should be a thing of the last century, jeez. This is why I opt out of trying to be a maintainer.
While I understand the sentiment I feel like this barrier also protectes the project from hordes of unexperienced developers that want to leave their stamp on Linux without being willing to invest the necessary focus, patience and seriousness.
This man is such a treasure. The whole world is LUCKY to have him.
Whether your project is open source or commercial, you really need to cherish your maintainers enthusiastically. I left Google shortly after finding out that there was a de facto "no promotion for maintenance" policy. (I was a tester, not a maintainer, BTW.)
Sounds like apprentice maintainer could be a thing.
I don't think so. I've been programming since 1983. People see things differently. Not everything can be taught to get people to see things the way they should. Take for example lots of people think having many people and different views is a good thing. Not always. Some times there is a right way and simply everything else is the wrong way. The only way that matters in such a case is the right way. Having many people just leads to explaining the same thing over and over and over again.
So you pick an apprentice. How long will it be before you realize he or she was he wrong one to pick. Well pick 10 apprentices and teach all of them may one will come out right. Maybe, then you spend more time teaching apprentices than doing the work you should. The fact is this is what school is for and well schools are failing at the job they should be doing.
Add to that you have this entire hand holding garbage going on. By that I means stuff like TDD. TDD is purely there to hold the hands of the less than mediocre programmers. They need programmers but they don't have enough good ones. So they came up with methods to hold the hands of the bad ones. Think about it this way. You create a multimeter and then you create another one to test the other your are building along side it. Neither of them have ever been calibrated so in the end you have two uncalibrated mulit-meters.
If you watch youtube you can find people doing TDD demos. And some how they mange to mess up the test code. So then what are they going to start writing more test code to test the test code. You probably think that well they must not be very experience programmers. Well only problem is Uncle "Bob" is also one of those people who made bad test code in his video.
So no you can't teach it.
@@GRHmedia that was a very long and very roundabout way to get to where you did. Which was ultimately just railing against modern software development practices. But as mentioned in the video, kernel maintainers aren't necessarily programmers. They are people who work with people as their primary skill, and look at code as a secondary.
Can it be taught? Absolutely it can be. You said so yourself. It's what schools should be teaching. But since they aren't, or aren't to your standard, it's absolutely up to the people with the experience to teach the inexperienced.
@@praecorloth”you can’t teach it” is insane.
@@praecorloth I disagree that it can be taught. It's a personality thing and not a skill that can be learned. Maintainers need to be rigid and structure-driven, otherwise their role is not going to work. If at all, you can teach best practices how to communicate in a less abrasive way, even when dealing with most annoying people and avoid useless discussions that are ultimately just a waste of time. However, you cannot teach how to be a good maintainer that is actually preserving quality and rejects shitty code, you already need that mindset in the first place.
@@praecorloth Maintainers need to be programmers, even highly experienced ones: they need to review the code of others, and act as a gatekeeper to their module, so the level of maintainability stays as high as possible. Maintaining a project is a constant battle against code rot, because even with all very experienced contributors, the natural thing to happen is that contributors make their feature work, and hack its integration into the other related parts, because they don't know about and understand the ideas of all of the abstractions everyone has ever invented in that part of the codebase.
I am high-key worried about what will happen to the Linux kernel if anything ever happens to Linus. I'm really worried that everything will all just get corrupted and atrophy.
I think that chance is very very small. On the one hand there are a lot of interests in steering the kernel in a certain direction on the other hand there are even more interests in keeping the kernel in a healthy state that can be used by many generations of distributions to come. After all the vast majority of our computing power is running with a Linux kernel so having this core tool for humankind go all funny because of commercial or political interests is highly unlikely simply because as humans we cannot afford to do so.
Should Linus be looking at how to ensure that when he looses the ability to steer the kernel project it ends up being in good hands and able to continue for sure. But even if he does not it is highly likely that the community will take up the challenge and will keep this project ticking along for the simple reason that the many billion and even trillion dollar companies that are heavily invested in Linux based system must ensure that they continue to have this basic building block to continue to build their business on.
@@RobCoops good point. We just need to beware of supervillains like Dr. Evil who want to insert their malware into the kernel for one million dollars. 🤌
most of the kernel code is very complex and undocumented. Coupled with the fact that changes are made through mailing lists, I don't think he will find anyone for the job any time soon until he gets with the times.
Which conference did you rip this from without attribution?
th-cam.com/video/OvuEYtkOH88/w-d-xo.html
A little bit aggresive, but you're right.
This is from Linus' keynote at The Linux Foundation from 2 months ago. The host is Dirk Hohndel, the head of the open source program office at Verizon.
Just hire full time developers as maintainers. Setup crowdfunding if the money isn't already there.
Many billions of dollars are made from Linux.
Companies "just" need to pay their dues
@@zxcvb_bvcxz Why? There's no obligation to so the majority won't.
@@JollyGiant19 crowdfunding should be a last resort
the foundation receives 200 million per year. That is enough to get paid coders
@@eng3d The Linux Foundation in 2022 spend less then 5% on Linux. The rest goes into AI and Cryptocurrencies.
It is fascinating to learn a little bit about how the kernel project is run in real life. There should be a book about this topic.
Yes, people are hard, and the Kernel must be protected.
An influx of enthusiasm and productivity may sound good, but, it would all crash without moderation, and revue from maintainers.
Even my best young inovators often write risky code. Only time and experience fixes this trait..
Maintaining the entropy is always difficult
I think you mean inertia
@@aaalynch5706 No what I mean is that maintaining the things to remain in order/ stable is always difficult. Adding new randomness(code etc) is easier into the system.
it has inertia, but people relation is surely an ever-increasing entropy
If you are the guy in the front row holding your camera up in the air completely oblivious to your surroundings; maybe skipping this lecture and watching it on TH-cam would have been a better option.
So proud of you Torvalds, your communication to humans and computers alike have grown and soared, though developers still make up secret languages to code, I understand because of you alone, why certain steps may be necessary for adaptation into the coming of a new era. You as well as the GNU foundation inspire me to keep trying in all of life's endeavors. Thanks for being awesome!~
What conference is this?
Open Source Summit th-cam.com/video/OvuEYtkOH88/w-d-xo.html
Sounds you guys need a padavan system for maintainers somewhat to get practice?
According to Wikipedia Linus gets paid to work on the kernel. I don't know the economic situation for most people working on the kernel, especially maintainers. I don't really know that ecosystem. But if you expect skilled people to work for free in this day and age, you live in a fairy-tale world. People need to eat, want to have income so they can live decently without struggling. Making this about ethics and morals of single developers and depoliticizing the issue is dumb.
Core maintainers are paid by the Linux Foundation just as Linus is. And they are paid a more than livable wage. The problem isn’t with money, the problem is finding people competent enough to have such an important job, while also being willing to fit themselves into the archaic, nasty mess that is the kernel development mailing lists and git repos.
@@Daktyl198 Ok interesting
I also happen to not have any information on the subject, but I have an even stronger opinion than you.
@@BotondZalaiRuzsics thanks for being a jerk, was much needed
It probably doesn’t help either that the development model / tools are really antiquated.
Writing bad code is easy. Writing good code is hard.
I don't think its a relationship issue, it's a technical one.
It's helped by the introduction of Rust into the kernel, but the fact a monolithic kernel like Linux is incredibly hard to maintain without serious manpower. It also makes managing the complex and busy git history of Linux very hard to do without relying on a handful of super-developers (who Linus claims you don't need to be to maintain the kernel, but with the thousands of commits, branches, and hardware required, you need to be) because any more than the few that can be easily managed within a mailing list quickly spirals out of control and into bikeshedding (or whatever corpo term for it).
The kernel was originally, and still is, designed around sending commits and patches to a single developer, and not the idea that multiple systems can be maintained by distinct teams. It's only barely working for Linux because it has so many stakeholders and contributors, but under most conditions this kind of developer system is unsustainable.
Not only is it draining and stressful, but it's also unpaid if I'm not mistaken, and I suspect that's a big part of the problem.
Much as it scares me, Linux might benefit from the first AI Clone (of Linus) to be given CTO status.
Wow, a developer with a reputation for being a complete asshole says dealing with people is hard 😮
I've worked in software maintenance, for a multinational company. It was boring at times, a lot of meetings. But I also had the best laughs of my life reading production code written by morons.
If i could, i would be maintaining.
But my social skills leave a bit to be desired for that...
Maybe i should at least *try* ...
Ah yes, he’s talking about the elder gods.
When Torvalds is gone, Linux will quite likely go down the drain unless someone else steps in with the same pit bull attitude. Then it will be alive just a little longer.
Greg is already there.
By pit bull attitude do you mean being a dick? If so, what a ridiculous take. You can tell people they're wrong or their code isn't good without being a dick. Shit, even Linus himself thinks it's wrong or else he wouldn't have gone to anger management treatment.
You can see the fatigue on Linus's face 😳😳😳
When was this interview?
December 5-6, 2023
Just imagine if the world was run by this level of honest meritocracy. Linus for emperor!
It needs to automated usind ChatGPT (when ChatGPT i a little bit better, maybe version 5?). Then NOBODY will be able to decide what is good but ChatGPT.
90% of software product lifecycle is maintenance.
May Allah guide and protect Linus Torvalds Amin.
It doesn’t help that instruction sets are starting to change every single generation now, which means every two years you’re having to learn a new way of doing things, plus the addition of new ISA’s being added every year as well.
So tiresome having to learn new ISA’s constantly, two years you’re just finally getting a true grasp on the last ISA.
Are you a compiler programmer?
@@linearz Not these days. I don’t do much programming anymore, but I used to do a lot of Assembly and Embedded stuff.
Well it really depends on what you do. I've been working with embedded devices for a long time and almost never had to use assembly. A lot of the Linux assembly code has been rewritten to C as well.
Compilers take care of instruction sets. The fraction of assembly code in the LInux kernel is extremely tiny.
The majority of Linux uses portable C-code. More on point are the device drivers, there a thousands of them.
🤔 hear description of an architect
an architect sees the whole picture and find best (overall) solution,
has to communicate with lot of people (stakeholders from time to time),
also has experience and understand experts concepts and work without getting lost in the details
🤔
maybe using the correct term will help to solve the problem
what you need are architects, strong and dedicated people are all around the place
Linus insults maintainers on weekly basis. That's why.
02:48 - It's incredibly frustrating to see someone blocking the view by raising their phone right in front of Linus's face during such an important discussion. We need to remember the basic etiquette of being in an audience, respecting both the speaker and those around us who are trying to engage.
Plus, nobody is going to watch or care about his shitty phone video. They'll just watch this video.
Well, the audio was not affected by this, so the main part of the 'important discussion' could still be heared by everyone.
What I think I want to say ... do not overdramatise things.
Is frustrating for me too, but maybe the person don't even know that was blocking the vision.
@@psychosomatic7035part of the issue is the placement of the camera. It should have been elevated to be above the crowd. This would then not even have been an issue.
You have also to concede how incredibly good timing is as Linus was starting to mention how hard people is... it fits, in a way.
>let me be an asshole to everyone for 20 years
>why does no one want to help me?
Prediction: This becomes the most viewed video on this channel. 😂
30 years of dog cussing people for their sloppy programming and now we can't find any volunteers.
This is specifically the problem LMAO Lang is intended to solve.
I guess, publicly insulting the people that works for free on your pet project doesn't help either
Just port to javascript😂
The linux ethos needs a culture swing. Lots of weird attempted gatekeeping and also people who do definitely know a lot but they act like dicks to people who are very competent but newer and make "noob" mistakes and honstly, most of the linux devs I've seen are average at best.. I dont mean average in terms of what you will see in corporations but average as in programmers as a whole. Average is still pretty decent tbh, but a lot of these guys act like they are gods gift in one way or another. Its terribly cringe.
That’s a serious claim. Can you provide examples of such behaviour?
Right as soon as I entered the computer science department at my university many years ago it was just constant smuggery and elitism. They say a part of maturing is being able to see yourself in others. I saw myself in them and hated it. I think what you're describing is true in the computer science field in general not just "linux devs".
Linus himself is well known for being a dick to people. The fish rots from the head.
@@Valerius123true in most technical fields like medicine and science too
They are very definitely not "average" programmers. Did one of them step on your toe by any chance?
Linus is right, but ironically so. The Linux code isn't the issue, the Linux *community* is the problem. Linus, himself, is notoriously hard to deal with. Who wants to contribute when you are just going to get yelled at for it!? Then again, the other side of the coin is also true. A bad contribution is arguably worse than not contributing at all.
His reputation for yelling epithets is exaggerated, but indeed it's what people hear.
It's also just difficult for a new contributor to get their patches accepted, as far as I know. (I'm not a kernel contributor.) I think they should be working on lowering the barrier to entry for contribution, while maintaining the high standards for code quality. Probably more CI and automated checks are needed: it's really easy to write bad C code, and in any language, it's really easy to just make an exception in this abstraction for your feature. It would be nice if people could check and fix these before their patches even hit the mailing lists.
then fact that there are no maintainers or lack of of, tells me there are problems within that community and now linux is paying the price
@@szaszm_CI is not superior to human error checking due to the lack of reasoning.
As for the quality of kernel contributions i really think rust should be favored. It is more robust against typical errors in programming.
@@aladdin8623 Not superior, but complementary: CI finds boring issues quickly, sparing human attention. A human can review afterwards.
If it pays a living and you can filter the worthwhile candidates...
There is more money then candidates for this job. The new generation cant get into this project that needs at least a decade of training.
I know I am supposed to worship Linus, and I do think he is a brilliant dude - but he has the same problem that the vast majority of the old guys in IT have, which is that they have not made a concerted effort to bring in the new generation.
I would love to be a Linux kernel maintainer, but the information is so scattered, so hard to decipher, often out of date, essentially expects you to pull information out of thin air. When you try to be humble, and admit that you just don’t know, you get told to figure it out and that nobody’s gonna spoonfeed you information.
I’m sorry, how were you all trained to begin with? You either had a mentor or more time to figure it out. Not to mention the technology was simpler back then - which is something they don’t like to admit.
When they retire or die off, there’s not gonna be very many people to replace them and they are gonna have no one to blame but themselves. The few people that will be able to replace them work their asses off and will probably still have to rewrite a lot of stuff from scratch because they will have not gotten the context from anybody.
Maybe it comes down to the fact that most programmers, like mathematicians, have terrible social skills, which is why they are programmers; they just want to sit and program and mind their own business, and then die. They don't want to communicate, which explains their aversion to writing understandable documentation and mentoring the youth. Programming has an isolated, autodidactic culture around it, which makes it self-defeating. It's something that needs to change, but it won't come from the aforementioned group; so I am happy that people like you can see this, which means it's not hopeless.
If they are not paid, then this isn't surprising at all.
Aaaaand it gets worse now ..
Google got it right with Android, a kernel that is maintained by an organisation but is open source.
As a software developer, the whole Linux Kernel thing looks rocket science to me. There’s no open forum which is beginner friendly and appreciate effort where I can learn something. Sure, you can look at the source code and understand but there are two problems- Linux kernel is huge and second is Hardware related code is completely alien to me.
Really what we need is not make Linux Kernel such a huge thing. Part of the problem is Linus himself
aerial runner
distributions
_stream_ source
few days already like decades
What's the pay like? I'm a EE with a specialization in Computers and Digital. If it pays better than the defense industry I'll consider it.
lmao. I specialize in "Electroics, electricity, and circuits" Pretty much as generic as your specialization is. Yikes.
@@FainTMako
Well clearly you're unaware of the different specializations in EE so let me enlighten you. There is no generic EE anymore, or so I'm told.
Power - self explanatory
Computers and Digital - semiconductor doping, analog and discrete controls, aka you design a MIPS processor at the transistor level before your undergrad is over. I2C, CAN, Modbus, etc.
Signals - EMF manipulation, modulation, ADC, DAC, PSK, etc
Those are the ones I remember. So yeah, I could do kernel maintenance, its just that I doubt it pays as well as my current job.
do you mean pay as in monetary compensation? i think you need to do some research first.
Also, I'm a GG with specialisation in Computers and Analogue. Hahaha
Good pay because the club is small. Certainly better than the defense industry.
@@xokelis0015 When your explanation includes "self explanatory", you aren't doing a great job at explaining. And why would you think you have any idea how to maintain a giant codebase when that's utterly unrelated to EE? If you think the "computer and digital" part of EE is related to being a maintainer, then boy are you unqualified.
then slow down development
ב''ה, are political and criminal threats in source code still an issue, e.g. use of "free()"? Then the authorities bear the burden.
make an AI
Fork it, modify it, build it and use it. How hard should it be? Maybe elitism is a bit of a problem here.
You don't fork the kernel; you clone it, patch it, and email the changes to the maintainers via the mailing list.
Believe it or not, that is git's envisioned workflow! 😆
Teach
4:20 nice
/sarcasm why not fragment the ecosystem into billion of different distributions? /s lawl
It’s almost like people get tired of working for free, being treated like shit the whole time.
I can't help but wonder if Kernel maintenance is something that can be handed off to a newly-fomed consortium. It could possibly be made up by IBM, Red Hat, Canonical and (regretfully) Micro$oft.
No. IBM and Microsoft had their chance to build their own unix systems in the 80s and 90s, and failed at it. IBM owns redhat now, so that's just IBM and IBM, and canonical is dog shit at software lately. They should not have control over how the Linux kernel is built, because Linux is unix for the masses by the masses.
I'd much rather see a global group of universities with computer science divisions take over maintainership of the kernel.
I'm sure creating a highly toxic and ego fueled environment has nothing to do with the low appeal of it, Linus. I'm sure talking to your most valuable assets like they're the scum of the earth is not a "developer lacking social skills" problem.
Nothing screams 'toxxxic' like people flailing and whining about their hurt egos and being underappreciated (source; self). The community has attitude issues for sure, its just not where people conveniently want it to be
The biggest barrier to finding new maintainers is Linus’s personality
I dont think so, when your software is running on billions of devices, you have to be as careful as him
Obviously you don't understand the job. Maintaining large amount of code is pure hell, let alone the code that runs on billions of devices.
Linus is in fact a great example of great OS leader. Linux would be impossible without him.
Agreed. Total nasty man.
Have you ever been in the role of maintaining software projects with a bunch of people that just happen to be part of the "team"?
It just needs a few people and constant discussions about bad practices that other people consider to be good ideas in order to ask yourself why you even bother. If you don't stop such people, the project's quality will inevitably suffer. It's one of the reason why you find such horrible code bases in many companies, because of people who just came in, took a dump on everything, left again and nobody dares or bothers to clean up any mess that was done before.
Sadly, that’s true. With all due respect to Linus and great appreciation to his historical work. What a self-respecting developer on earth would work with such a person lacking basic politeness in his interactions with colleagues? Lots of talented people will stay away from such unhealthy work atmosphere.
Linus: "The above code is sh*t, and it generates shit code. It looks bad, and there’s no reason for it."
Jeez, I wonder why people aren't eager to work on this project in their spare time.
It's draining and stressful, and Linus personally treats them like shit in many well-documented cases. Why would anyone start doing it? Why would anyone keep doing it?
I guess this is why we see rust on the kernel because hipster people are not really into C
Rust is for the people; C is now old enough to be the hipsters' choice.
ill take the job danke-you, danke-you for having me in the team, i once led a minekrift server which makes me suitable as a leader, linux sebastian is my idol, i dont know how you got his name wrong in the title, but i know better
under my leadership every dev will receive a shipment of 60 guava energy drinks a month (thats 2 a day, we work every day to make it better, and it boosts efficiency and tastes good)
rocket league event every friday, every dev 1v1 me, if you dont partake you're fired, if you win you get a stuffed panda
you can do it!
Oh those minions do not want to work for the leader while staying in his shadow and making him rich and famous
This is a very dumb take
@@kippers12isOG It's a little bombastic, but it's not that far from the truth in that many skilled developers are not in a position to opt in to performing a taxing and mission-critical role for zero compensation.
They do get paid though by the companies? Bold of you to think everyone is doing it for free.
@@curious_banda Nobody said "everyone is doing it for free". I'm saying not everyone is getting paid: many skilled developers are in the position that they're contributing to the kernel without getting paid -- and many are finding that they can not continue.
@@ChrisStavros Many is a good chunk of everyone. And many are paid. So idk which circlejerk you are in. The only kernel devs doing it for free are those who are learning, are fired, want to build up some reputation, or few cases just because they like it in which case monetary discussion doesn't matter.
There's a theory of gender archetypes saying men are Producers of stuff and women are Keepers of stuff. Thus I think females make better maintainers than Males. Us men, we Like to get a job done and then Check Out, chill Out and Go to another place and start Something new. Maintaining a codebase ist quite the opposite of that.
Get a load of this guy
My goodness you are too far gone aren't you. Go outside and touch grass mate.
The only gendershite I've ever heard is that in theory, females make for better QA candidates as there is a theory going around that women can notice small changes or inconsistenties better. Mind you, only QA and nothing more. But it is just that, a theory and nothing else. Go get your gender swap surgery if you're too afraid to be a man and get the hell out of this comment section bruv.
Why do we care what this guy thinks anymore.
Because the phone you're using to write your dribble with is based on what he wrote, dimwit.
the guy who created some of the most important opensource projects? Don't know 🤷♀
Because he did something that matters. Why do you think nobody cares what you think?
Because the work he does enables the technology we all use today.