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Linux 4.19-rc4 Released As Linus Temporarily Steps Away From Kernel Maintainership
Linux 4.19-rc4 is out today as the very latest weekly development test kernel for Linux 4.19. It's another fairly routine kernel update at this stage, but more shocking is that Linus Torvalds will be taking a temporary leave from kernel maintainership and Greg Kroah-Hartman will take over the rest of the Linux 4.19 cycle.
Following the recent decision to change the location of the Linux Kernel Summit after Torvalds accidentally booked his flights to the wrong dates/location, plus other discussions happening recently, Linus Torvalds is taking a temporary leave. "I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately," he wrote as part of today's 4.19-rc4 announcement.
So it begins.
Also at ZDNet.
The Linux kernel has adopted a new code of conduct. The link to the code of conduct is here.
It seems Linus Torvalds is also taking a break from being the top kernel maintainer.
The short story is Linus screwing up his scheduling to the Linux maintainers conference which was entirely rescheduled around his mistake. Then he was approached by people who are concerned about his blunt (or some consider rude) comments on the kernel dev mailing list.
I, personally, will miss Linus and I hope he gets things figured out.
Linux kernel firebrand Linus Torvalds has apologized for his explosive rants, and vowed to take a break from the open-source project and seek help.
In a mailing list message on Sunday, Torvalds admitted his "flippant attacks in emails" to fellow Linux programmers and project contributors "have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal ... I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry."
"I need to change some of my behavior," he added, "and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely."
Torvalds, who created the Linux operating system kernel in 1991 and has overseen its development ever since, also promised to take a breather from the project – like the sabbatical he took to create Git – and do some self-reflection to, well, be nicer to everyone.
Elon Musk was in the news recently for blowups, as well. Should technology professionals make stress management and interpersonal skills part of their professional regimen, for their own long-term personal and professional health?
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @01:38PM (24 children)
I am split about this one. On one hand I think he deserves to be healthy. On the other hand, most of the greatest accomplishments the world has ever seen were accomplished by unhealthy people. So it is good for him, but maybe not so good for the project.
Personally I think they should invent a nobel prize for Linus and Stallman. They have given them out for a hell of a lot less.
Where would the world be without these guys?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 17 2018, @02:11PM (7 children)
> most of the greatest accomplishments the world has ever seen were accomplished by unhealthy people
Disagree. To randomly pick some famous old dudes, Einstein, Feynman? Or Wellington, Churchill (the first one)?
Hook and Newton were nutjobs, its true...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 17 2018, @02:33PM (6 children)
Don't know about Hook, but Newton was a lousy alchemist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @06:51PM
At one point Newton thought people were trying to "embroil him with women". I swear I read somewhere he accused someone of hiding temptresses under his bed, but cant find it at the moment.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/531510 [jstor.org]
https://www.flandershealth.us/lead-poisoning/the-madness-of-isaac-newton.html [flandershealth.us]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @08:44PM (4 children)
Point me in the direction of an alchemist who was anything but...
At least alchemy was an attempt at a science, albeit of a proto/pseudo sort, want to talk lousy? try reading any of his religious nonsense sometime.
I should add at this point that I do have in my collection of books some obscure limited run (100 copies) Alchemical tracts, one of the joys of being an obscure book collector in a town where you're known to all the bookshop owners by your first name (interestingly, I can't remember ever telling any of them it) is that they do keep all the weird stuff they come across in a box in the back of the shop for you to have first dibs on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @09:29PM
The interesting thing about alchemy is that eventually you were bound to start getting heavy metal poisoning which includes mental disturbances as a consequence. So as you learned more about it you would go nuttier and nuttier to the point you get more obsessed but less capable of reaching your goal...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 17 2018, @10:31PM
Don't be silly. Some anonymous dude walks in your store, and he never tells you his name, you just KNOW that he's Anonymous Coward. Anonymous has been on television, all over the internets, in the newspapers, on broadcast news - where have you NOT been?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday September 17 2018, @11:09PM (1 child)
Alchemists were, as you say, trying to do science as they understood it in their day. They were ignorant as all get-out, but weren't stupid, and did manage to figure out some important ideas. For instance, if you actually read Roger Bacon, you'll see that he legitimately knew some real science, but it was all mixed in with crazy mystical writing.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @04:33AM
And the goal of alchemists to change one element to another, long doubted and ridiculed, we now know is possible. Although not through means of chemistry but physics, through nuclear reactions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmutation [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday September 17 2018, @02:39PM (9 children)
Boomer detected. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, just a worldview thats a little behind the times.
Everybody is unhealthy or they're be immortal. One political party pushes what boils down to "being shitty" as a way of striking against the legacy fascist white male, etc.
That jumped the shark when Obama got one for "not being white". Lame, weak. The hard science prizes still get a little respect... for now. I'm sure they'll fix that soon enough.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @02:49PM (5 children)
Heck I just realized for the past years I've been more interested in the Ig Nobel awards than the Nobel awards.
Other than the Obama bullshit Peace Prize I can't really remember the other Nobel wins and what they were for (nor do I even car to look up), whereas I can remember a number of the Ig Nobel ones... ;)
(Score: 5, Informative) by PiMuNu on Monday September 17 2018, @03:14PM (4 children)
Recent in physics:
* Detection of gravitational waves (i.e. discovery of a completely new class of astrophysics instrument)
* Higgs discovery (i.e. discovery of the origin of mass)
* Blue LED invention (many many applications)
* Neutrino oscillation discovery (breaks standard model)
> I can't really remember the other Nobel wins (nor do I even car to look up)
Indeed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @06:58PM (3 children)
Meh some German guy predicted that 100 years ago.
Meh some Italian guy predicted that 60 years ago.
Why should we give so much honour to people who confirm the existence of stuff that others have long predicted?
Not saying they didn't do a good job but in the old days the Nobel Physics prizes were given to people who found stuff others didn't predict...
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday September 17 2018, @08:08PM
Prediction is one thing. Having a verifiable observation of the phenomenon that was predicted by the theory is quite another. It's called science and it's how we engage with physical reality. You might like to try it.
In the old days the theories were much simpler and the predictions less grand hence people making discoveries that other people didn't predict. Technology has had to advance a great deal to be able to measure these phenomena that were predicted using some very ingenious reasoning a hundred or so years ago.
But I know you were just joking.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @09:37PM
AFAIK Nobel prizes are never attributed to theoretical physicists, only to the ones making practical, applicable, discoveries.
That's why Einstein got his Nobel for the photo-electric effect. If he had only published the relativity theories, he'd never had it.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:26AM
In general I actually agree with GP - it is an embarrassment to the experimentalists that they are lagging behind the theorists.
Specifically though:
* neutrino oscillations were not *predicted*; merely they were identified as a possibility. Most theorists thought that they would not be discovered (like mu2e conversion nowadays). Experiment showed the nature of reality.
* the power of gravitational waves is that it gives us an entirely new type of space telescope. The reason it is neat is that we have developed an entirely new class of instrumentation. The observation is also quite neat.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @06:26PM (1 child)
Let's not rewrite history to support an anti-SJW agenda. Obama got the Peace Prize for "not being Bush," not for being black. I think it's equally garbage, but let's not inject fake identity politics into it. (Isn't that the standard accusation that some make against SJWs?)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 17 2018, @07:30PM
Agreed. Wasn't it on Day #1 that people were saying he was awarded the Peace Prize for "not being Bush"? Why yes, yes it was:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/10/09/judith-miller-obama-wins-nobel-peace-prize.html [foxnews.com]
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/10/09/tommy-seno-obama-nobel-prize-win.html [foxnews.com]
http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929433,00.html [time.com]
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/10/nobel_laureate_obama_owes_bush.html [npr.org]
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/10/obama_nobel_saturday_night_liv.html [npr.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:24PM
He never got such thing! He got the nobel peace price. Let's not confuse the two. The former is prestigious and the latter is a disgrace.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday September 17 2018, @03:53PM
The approximate equivalent for contributions to computing is the ACM Turing Award.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @09:03PM (2 children)
All using OpenBSD and not putting up with this SJW shit.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @10:43PM (1 child)
OpenBSD? compiled with GCC is it not?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:19AM
Nope [undeadly.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday September 17 2018, @09:13PM (1 child)
No, no: you have to "give all your bases" and all the prizes to ass-hats like Gates. Without Gates we wouldn't have Windows and Doors and and and.... STUFF like Clippy and BOB and and and.....
....
Yeah. You're right.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday September 18 2018, @02:29AM
... and affordable/commoditized personal computers.
Gotta give this to Microsoft, for a very long time it was the single... ummm, yeah, let's call it so... OS producer not tightly linked to a hardware line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford