Can you explain in simple terms why a person cannot reply abusively (whatever that means) if he so desires? You're not obliged to interact with him, it's a free choice to join or to quit the lkml.
One of the main issues Torvalds says the kernel has is not being able to find maintainers. People don’t want to be abused while volunteering could be part of that.
Another possibility is that he gets paid over a million dollars a year by an employer, who will have some concerns over legal risks, reputation, etc.
Perhaps, but if Linus would rather see the mainline kernel development dwindle than compromise his way of managing people and code, he's still well within his rights.
As for his relationship with his employer — they both have the freedom to terminate it when their interests do not align anymore.
I genuinely struggle to understand where all the high expectations come from. Somehow people think that an open source project leader is obliged to be kind and polite and humble and understanding. None of these obligations exist as far as I can tell.
Do you genuinely think an employer ordering an employee "don't tell people to kill themselves" is "high expectations"?
This is tragedy of the commons stuff, everyone is sitting quietly on the commons in a shared space, respecting the other people, and you drive your modified pickup truck through the middle rolling coal and blaring dance music and jeering "if you don't like it you can always move to another city" as if toning it down a bit is unreasonable but telling people to uproot their entire lives is reasonable.
> "Somehow people think that an open source project leader is obliged to be kind and polite"
Everybody is obliged to be kind and polite[1], that's one of the foundational parts of society - saying please and
thank you, 'don't stare', consider the effect of your actions on other people - is kindergarten teachings; we all live in a shared space, and politeness is the grease that smoothes all the interactions between different peoples.
In any other situation, if a person has some power, authority or influence over people who can't leave or won't leave, and they immediately turn to abusing them just because they can, we would say that was bad. If a husband abuses a wife who can't leave, if a manager abuses employees who won't quit, if a religious leader abuses devotees, if a child abuses a pet, if a teacher abuses students, if a government mistreats illegal immigrants, we (society, possibly the legal system) would object quite strongly. Why does invoking the words "open source" excuse anyone from these expectations as if 'leading an open source project' makes someone above everyone else and outside the normal expected behaviours?
It is also a thing that you can't separate "don't scream abuse at people" with whining "why do I have to be polite?" as if those are the only two options, there's quite a range of rude responses which are not abusive - saying the code sucks, saying 'I wont read all that' - and there are polite responses which are blunt and not saccharine - saying 'I have the decision making authority and do not want to do it that way.', 'nope, PR rejected, do not try again', 'I am not taking PRs of any kind, I do not want to'.
Aside from that, as mentioned, this is not just any open source - he's a paid employee, this is not him sharing his work on his own server with the scope of him being rude or abusive limited to a few people; this is a hugely important worldwide system. The Linux Foundation is funded by companies who use Linux such as Amazon and Google. They employ people who work on the Linux kernel and have to be subscribed to lkml to do their jobs. The Linux Foundation benefits from the work they do and the changes they upstream. The companies donating money have shareholders and expectations of the companies they work with and charities they donate to. And presumably they have some ability to lean on their donations to ask for favours. All this happens under US employment laws and regulations on several sides. This presenting it as a trivial "if you don't like it, leave" is a deliberate and bad-faith oversimplification. It's the race to "person who cares less wins, and I'm a cynical nihilist so I care about nothing, hah!".
I'm sorry, but I just can't make any sense out of this.
> This presenting it as a trivial "if you don't like it, leave" is a deliberate and bad-faith oversimplification
This is not an oversimplification, this is a fact that you don't like and prefer to ignore. It doesn't disappear when you close your eyes though.
A grumpy person made an open source project that by chance became successful. He didn't force all these people and corporations to use it and fund it, it was a free choice on their part.
What is he supposed to do now, change his personality to please random people on the internet? Why? How do you even see this happening? Or you think grumpy people should have been prohibited from writing code in the first place?
Furthermore he does not hold anyone hostage as you try to present this. Linux is not Linux Foundation. You can use and develop Linux without funding the Linux Foundation. It's just more convenient like that but again you are free to exchange patches outside of it.
People who walk in and say "nice project you have here, now you comply or we take it away from you" don't have my sympathy.
