To me, it seems that the biggest lesson here has to do with cults of personality. No matter how awesome he is, Linus should never have been put up on such a high pedestal, given such a complete pass on everything he said, for so long. The longer it went on, the more he attracted both imitators and detractors. When he had a change of heart (and BTW I think the person who talked to him and finally made a difference was probably his daughter), neither of those two groups knew how to handle it gracefully. I've seen plenty of BS from both the Reddit/4chan troll army on one side (quite prevalent in this thread) and the anti-LF clique on the other (haven't seen them here yet) since then.
It's particularly interesting to contrast this with the relatively smooth process of the Python community. They adopted a code of conduct a while ago, and more recently Guido van Rossum - he for whom the term "Benevolent Dictator For Life" was invented - stepped down. There was some contention, but nothing like what we're seeing for Linux. I don't think it's because of the two projects' prominence. I think it's because Guido was never as polarizing as Linus. Again, the lesson is perhaps that nobody should be allowed to drive a project of that size toward such a cliff.
OK, so what did I get wrong? Please explain exactly which facts are incorrect, and what the correct version would be. Or is "revisionist" just a content-free dismissal of something other than your personal preferred narrative? Put up your version, and we'll see who the revisionist is.
The main thing is, I've yet to see any evidence that Linus' "abuse" actually hurt anyone in any way. Peoples' reactions ranged from amusement to cringing but I don't think anyone ever took his hyperbolic over-the-top profanity seriously. nobody was actually being hurt, and the Linux kernel developed into an amazing product that's in use everywhere around the world. Anyone who doesn't like the way Linus does things is free to fork the repo and do their own thing, and always has been.
Many people seem to want to paint Linux as having this terrible internal culture because mean ol' Linus was always randomly insulting people for no good reason, and I just haven't seen any proof of that myself. The idea that Linus had to change strikes me as odd--he wasn't hurting anyone, and nobody thought he was, until recently.
> I've yet to see any evidence that Linus' "abuse" actually hurt anyone in any way.
I have a feeling this will get dragged down into hair-splitting over what "hurt anyone" means, but I've known or known of several people whose careers were negatively affected. Sage Sharp comes immediately to mind. Some of the people who have tried to get security or real-time-scheduling patches in, only to met with a wall of invective, also come to mind. Sure, they probably went on to do their work elsewhere or maintain it as private patches, and were content doing so, but I'd still say that denied them recognition they deserved and also represent missed opportunities for Linux itself. I've personally stayed away from working on the Linux kernel, despite having worked on kernels since before Linux existed and thus knowing both the technical and cultural issues involved, because I just didn't want to be around him or Al Viro or some of the others I'd have to work with to get patches in.
So I have a different perspective than you. How is that "revisionist"? Couldn't that label be applied to your "nothing bad ever happened" version just as easily?
> The idea that Linus had to change strikes me as odd
Whether he had to or not, he felt it was beneficial to do so. Maybe those who idolize him should consider that he might have been right this time too.
It's particularly interesting to contrast this with the relatively smooth process of the Python community. They adopted a code of conduct a while ago, and more recently Guido van Rossum - he for whom the term "Benevolent Dictator For Life" was invented - stepped down. There was some contention, but nothing like what we're seeing for Linux. I don't think it's because of the two projects' prominence. I think it's because Guido was never as polarizing as Linus. Again, the lesson is perhaps that nobody should be allowed to drive a project of that size toward such a cliff.