Since this is inevitably going to come up during any mention of Jobs:
Why does Linus Torvalds get a pass, even admired (like in this thread right here), for OPENLY being an extremely vitriolic f*ker, and continuing to be so even after being called out for it to his face in interviews/questions from the audience, but Steve Jobs still gets shade for allegedly being an asshole based on mostly hearsay long after his death?
Telling people to be aborted, outright insulting them in various ways, I have to keep making sure I'm not reading 4chan instead of the Linux mailing list. I doubt Jobs ever even came close to that.
People give Linus a pass for literally the same reasons that Jobs had to be an "asshole" for: "Linux is his baby" "No one else is suited to lead" etc
Are you talking about the guy that had a deal with a Mercedes dealership to provide him a new car every 6 months so he could drive around without license plates so he could park in handicapped spaces?
> Why does Linus Torvalds get a pass, even admired, for OPENLY being an extremely vitriolic f*ker, and continuing to be so even after being called out for it to his face in interviews/questions from the audience,
Linux is a major part of the human species' infrastructure. So Linus asking people to put effort into things, and prioritize Linux over themselves to a significant degree, even when the going is hard, is typically reasonable. And he probably gets upset when people are lackadaisical about the process and the effort. If there are fuckups, billions can be affected. That doesn't make any action fine, indeed being gentle can in some cases be the best and most effective and responsible action. But that isn't always the case. Is Linus perfect or optimal? Might a better system exist? Maybe, but there is risk in experimenting. There are other kernels than Linux that can have different processes, and having a diversity of kernels and processes may be good.
What other kernels are there, what processes have they followed, and how have they fared? Windows kernels have done well in terms of usage, but there are a wealth of different reasons for that.
I actually somewhat agree with you; Linus has been an asshole in the kernel world for a long time, and it’s really not charming anymore.
I will admit that I used to find it funny but after having worked with a lot of people like Linus in the corporate world, a part of me wants to say something like “I promise you that you are not as smart as you think you are, and we are not as dumb as you think we are”.
You're conflating their jobs quite a bit, here. Torvalds is the project lead of Linux, whereas Jobs was the chief executive officer of Apple. There were almost certainly even meaner people than Linus internally pushing for highly opinionated macOS changes; we just never saw them. Jobs' legacy is more lambasted for his lack of technical acumen and interpersonal frustration.
Guys like Woz would make a particularly bad replacement for Torvalds, because while he was super talented, Woz was also a pushover who had to leave Apple after being insulted hundreds of times by Jobs, who had almost no valuable technical know-how. Torvalds will never make his mistake, and Linux has long been better off ignoring the Tannenbaum types.
I don't use or follow Linux but I do stumble upon news about it here and there, and I saw a video just a month or so ago, about Linus going off on RISC-V etc.
That one is comparatively nicer than some of the older stuff telling people to stop deepthroating Microsoft or to kill themselves or to shut the fuck up.
That said I really didn’t that that contributor creating a helper function like that to do some bitwise stuff was such a big deal, I think Linus overreacted and I don’t even know that I agree with his take that on it, but I do think it is probably bad to have a big change like this late in the release window.
The simple answer is he invented it, it’s his baby, and despite his faults he is still best equipped to lead the project. Post-Linus Linux has great potential to go horribly wrong.
Why does Linus Torvalds get a pass, even admired (like in this thread right here), for OPENLY being an extremely vitriolic f*ker, and continuing to be so even after being called out for it to his face in interviews/questions from the audience, but Steve Jobs still gets shade for allegedly being an asshole based on mostly hearsay long after his death?
Telling people to be aborted, outright insulting them in various ways, I have to keep making sure I'm not reading 4chan instead of the Linux mailing list. I doubt Jobs ever even came close to that.
People give Linus a pass for literally the same reasons that Jobs had to be an "asshole" for: "Linux is his baby" "No one else is suited to lead" etc