I love how just…normal…Linus is. Like…humble. Content.
Like, hey, I revolutionized the world with a pet project. Nbd.
When I was a kid I worshipped Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I’m glad I realized later that Linus and Woz are the real heroes.
Never meet your heroes. Have you ever seen the way he rages at people on the mailing list? Don’t get me wrong, he’s made some incredible technical contributions that I’m thankful for, but I have to push back against claims that he is a well-adjusted dude.
Considering how I end up saying worse, when I get 100+ line changes of code with a commit message that only illustrates 1 of the changes, I don’t think I care about anyone being “adjusted”.
Counterpoint: Linus was all out in the open.
I wouldn’t want to see what Bill Gates is like behind closed doors…especially as a kid.
He’s had to adjust quite a bit I’d say he’s thoroughly and well adjusted.
Yeah, Linus today is nothing like Linus in the 90s/00s
You also have to remember that he made an OS as a hobby project and suddenly everyone wanted to mess with it. It was the Wild West of decentralized project management in those days, I don’t condone any of that unprofessional behavior but I’m also not in the least bit fucking surprised that he had very personal rage-out moments as unsolicited criticism poured in from around the world, constructive and well intentioned or not. That’s a lot of unexpected pressure.
He got better, which implies to me that he wants to be a good person; and that’s all we can really ask of anyone.
Have you read the rants, he is often spot on.
Another example being the developer of GrapheneOS. Unhinged, but works in our favor. Just don’t follow them on social media.
Richard Stallman is another example of someone you wouldn’t describe as hinged, but you are glad exists.
Just keep him away from your birds.
