The developer needs to fix the problems in systemd before his patches are accepted

Apr 3, 2014 14:24 GMT  ·  By

Linus Torvalds seems to be very upset with a famous developer who had the wrong attitude towards the users and the Linux kernel developers.

Everything started from a bug in systemd that caused the operating system to fail to boot. A solution has been proposed, but not uptream for systemd, but for the Linux kernel, and a patch was submitted. Basically, the bug was still there in systemd, but code has been added to the Linux kernel so that this problem would be circumvented.

The patch was submitted to the kernel, but Linus Torvalds is not a big fan of adding code to the Linux kernel just to fix a problem from another package. He is not a patient man and this is not the first time that he intervened.

“Key, I'm [expletive] tired of the fact that you don't fix problems in the code *you* write, so that the kernel then has to work around the problems you cause. Greg - just for your information, I will *not* be merging any code from Kay into the kernel until this constant pattern is fixed. This has been going on for *years*, and doesn't seem to be getting any better.”

“I am *not* willing to take patches from people who don't clean up after their problems, and don't admit that it's their problem to fix. Kay - one more time: you caused the problem, you need to fix it. None of this ‘I can do whatever I want, others have to clean up after me’ [expletive],” said Linus Torvalds.

The developer that is being referenced in the mail is Kay Sievers and apparently, this is not the first heated discussion he had with Linus. Kay Sievers is now working at Red Hat and he is a developer for udev, systemd, and the Gummiboot EFI boot loader.

Linus Torvads doesn't have any preferential treatment for the Linux kernel developers. He has often scolded developer from problems in the kernel, and he has made numerous comments about people who add unnecessary code to the kernel. He has even said a few times that a good day is when someone removes line of code from the kernel.

It's unsure how this conflict between an important, and apparently stubborn, systemd developer and Linus Torvalds will end, but Linus is the gatekeeper, so the Red Hat developer might need to clean up his act.