14 DAY TRIAL // The creator of systemd, Lennart Poettering, had some very harsh words to say about the Linux community and about one of its role models, Linus Torvalds.
It might seem that the Linux community in its entirety is all about rainbows and bunnies, but the truth is that it's made up of regular people and the likes. Most of the other communities are formed in this way and Linux is no exception. The problem is that Linus is pegged as one of the people responsible by Lennart Poettering.
There has been some small friction between the two projects, Linux and systemd, but nothing that would indicate that something was amiss. In fact, when asked what he thought about systemd, just a couple of weeks ago, Linus Torvalds was actually very tactful about it.
A fish rots from the head down
Lennart Poettering has explained at great lengths the kind of hate mail and messages he gets on a constant basis. Some of those messages are pretty disturbing and a lesser man would have given up on his project a long time ago, just to make them go away. He also says that he understands the makeup of a community and that such individuals are present everywhere.
His issues with the open source communities don't stop here. He points at Linus Torvalds as being part of the problem, mainly because he is regarded as a role model and he can use some strong language at times.
"But more importantly, I'd actually put some blame on a certain circle of folks that play a major role in kernel development, and first and foremost Linus Torvalds himself. By many he is a considered a role model, but he is quite a bad one. If he posts words like '[specific folks] ...should be retroactively aborted. Who the [expletive] does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a [breast] to suck on?' than that's certainly bad."
"I am pretty sure the damage being done by this is quite obvious, it not only sours the tone in the Linux community, it is also teaches new contributors to adopt the same style. In other words: A fish rots from the head down," says Lennart Poettering in a Google+ post.
Conclusions are hard to draw
A community is a difficult thing to guide or to refine. Most of the times, it is what it is and there is little that can be done about it. The only thing that we can hope doing is to improve it, in small increments, until it becomes just a little bit better.