Post #4090716

2026-07-17 19:44 UTC

@bexelbie@toot.io Well, note that I said "kind" and not "nice". I try to be kind, I've never been accused of being nice. ;-) I don't think you misread him at all, nor do I disagree he has the right to "put his foot down" and steer the project as he chooses. But this feels (at the moment) like a misstep to me. And, of course, open source is and has always been as much political as technical for me. The more I look at it, though, the more I just see failed potential. But, really -- my thoughts are much more about how the surrounding conversation has shaped up with people taking sides and villainizing people on the other side rather than Linus' specific actions/comments.

Replies (1)

@bexelbie@toot.io 2026-07-17 21:10

@jzb@hachyderm.io you did say kind and somehow in my head when I was writing, I switched it to nice. This is a set of really disorganized thoughts cause I’m not sure how to get them straight yet: The old adage of “never read the comments” now seems to apply to almost everything that is not the original statement. Even people that I know and like and are close friends seem to have somehow transitioned from “having comments” to “performative rage bait and extremism.” What’s worse is that they don’t even seem to realize it. The Onion recently re-launched Infowars and my sister sent me the opening video segment off of YouTube. It was borderline unwatchable to me because it was such a perfect parody of rage bait. And even though info wars has historically been at one for extreme of the political divide, I feel like everybody strives for that level of performance, regardless of what their viewpoints are. LLMs as an additive to what is already in place represents an existential crisis for many people and for others it represents innovation and change that will supplant something that is already here. That wonky sentence is trying to walk both sides of that argument without taking a position. I do that not because I refuse to take a position, but because both sides are right if everything they say is going to happen, happens. And, both sides are wrong if it all doesn’t go as predicted. Right now we don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m gonna stop ideating into Mastodon and try and think about this some more.

Open ##4119893