Follow through will be key

Posted Sep 19, 2018 8:07 UTC (Wed) by bnastic (guest, #86682)
In reply to: Follow through will be key by rgmoore
Parent article: Code, conflict, and conduct

> If Linus comes back from his time away

I do not expect him to return a “new man”. I do not expect a 49 year old to simply acquire new personality over night. I also don’t expect him to stay with the Linux Foundation, but I’d love to be proven wrong on this.

Follow through will be key

Posted Sep 19, 2018 19:14 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

I do not expect him to return a “new man”.

I don't expect him to return a new man, at least in the sense that his behavior will completely change. But there's a lot of space between completely changed and completely unchanged. The biggest question is how sincerely he wants to change. I'm sure there will be plenty of people on LKML willing to remind him when he slips up. But the question is how he'll respond when that happens. If he's really committed to changing, he'll admit his mistakes and try to do better. If he changes his mind and decides things are fine as they are, he'll resist.

Follow through will be key

Posted Sep 20, 2018 4:51 UTC (Thu) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

I'm 50, and I'm still able to change. You're right. I doubt he'll come back as a "new man". But he'll come back as one that is more aware of his actions, and how they affect others. He'll still slip. He'll still say something that is probably very offensive. The difference is that we can tell him that what he said was over-the-top and I believe he'll step back, apologize, and try to do better.

Outside of computer conferences, I suck at social norms. I have to constantly be aware and think of what to say before saying it, where others just know how to act. My wife will poke me if I slip and start speaking without analyzing how it will be interpreted by others. I've gotten much better at knowing how to communicate without being offensive. I'm still working on it, and I have more to go.

Point being, it's not about being a "new man", it's about actually wanting to be better. The "old Linus" didn't appear to care about changing his behavior. The "new Linus" does. That's a HUGE difference.

Follow through will be key

Posted Sep 24, 2018 2:22 UTC (Mon) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

> I do not expect him to return a “new man”.

A *lot* of what Linus says and does ranges between good and excellent.
The number of times he uses inappropriate language are relatively few - but they have an effect out of proportion to their size (which is expected given Linus' power and position).

So Linus doesn't need to become a "new man", he just needs a little bit of a shave - file down those few rough edges a bit.