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Comment by zeteo | Hacker News Reader

> Bezos talks about a lesson imparted by his grandfather on one of the cross-country road trips they would take every summer: “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

Sure, that's nice rhetoric. And yet the "kind" Bezos has presided over some of the worst working conditions in the developed world [1] while the "blunt" Torvalds has kept together the very scattered Linux team for decades without controlling their income or work conditions. Apparently the more money you have, the more you can get away with a "do as I say, not as I do" standard.

[1] http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_...

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I think people like to dissect this too much. Your instincts, after millions of years of evolution, tell you all you need to know about a person. There is nothing "kind" about Linus, Bezos, Jobs, or even Gates for that matter.

Grandmas tend to be kind, but these people are definitely not anywhere near that realm.

Bezos, Jobs and Gates may be not, but Linus might very well be kind.

He doesn't take decisions that can screw thousands of people to his profit. Whether he would if he had that power, he didn't strive to get that power, and he doesn't have it, so while we can't rule it out, we also can tell that he isn't kind with any certainty.

And surely he's not "unkind" just because he's famous or has a full mouth. That's not what kindness is about -- I know people 10 times as foul mouthed, that were real sweethearts and could give you a liver if you needed one.

Agreed, he has given away his best work, to the world for free, which is an act of extreme kindness where I'm from.

This is work that improves many lives.

Exactly, deeds are louder than words. Can you imagine what the world would be like without linux? He and Stallman deserve statues. They have given us our freedom.

If we had to rely on microsoft and had no alternative could we get to sites that host anti-establishment views? We can never know, and need not go there thanks to these men.

Er. Linux is neat tech and all, but we had alternatives well before Linux existed. The rewriting of history is not necessary.

Yup, we also shouldn't forget Git, incredible software.

I think Stallman is also a kind guy and the world is a better place for having him around.

People say he is this and that, but I think some of his eccentric behaviour is just a survival mechanism.

> If we had to rely on microsoft and had no alternative could we get to sites that host anti-establishment views?

This is a bit of an odd non-sequitur. Are you implying that the World Wide Web (1989) would not exist if not for Linux (1991)? Or that it would somehow be censored of all Microsoft criticism?

That's laying it on a bit thick. Linus is reportedly worth $40m+ — he's not living as a Stallman-like ascetic, refusing all compensation for his labors.

Would he still be actively working on Linux 26 years later if it had never become popular enough for him to significantly monetize?

I can't read his mind of course, but most open-source founders below the "companies pay you big bucks to work/consult on it" level do end up burning out and abandoning/leaving the project or taking a reduced role after a while. And of course even if he wanted to he couldn't have worked on it full-time, for obvious reasons.

That's of course not to say he hasn't done an amazing job on Linux, or that he doesn't deserve particular praise for the first few years when he really was giving away his best work to the world for free.

>That's laying it on a bit thick. Linus is reportedly worth $40m+ — he's not living as a Stallman-like ascetic, refusing all compensation for his labors.

So? Who said he was ascetic (or should be)? What we said is that he gave the world his work for free.

And while he might be worth "$40m+" the Linux industry he helped create and spearheaded is worth tens of billions (if not hundreds). Heck, Git products alone should be close to a billion.

He could have easily gone for a slice of that pie early on, create branded proprietary lines of his software, etc, and it would have been a different landscape.

I'm partial to thinking about this with Max Weber's idea of "charismatic authority". The charismatic leader gives things away, is popular -- being in favour is what charisma is all about -- but in an extreme instance of that climate, criticising the leader becomes dangerous. Luckily, in the case of Linux, the verdict of the user base (does it work?) provides a kind of guidance to Linus. But he knows ("git") that his personality is somehow more involved with this than it should be.

>relying on a security firm with alleged neo-Nazi connections that

Wow. That sent my BS sensors straight up to saturation. Someone has an agenda here, and it's not to inform you.

You have a point in that security firms and right-wing hooligans go together like peanut butter and jelly, so it's a bit like saying someone drinks soda which contains H2O, which Hitler also consumed daily. Even if true it says nothing.

If the security industry in your country really is rife with right-wing hooligans, you need better regulation.

Regulation of what?

As if some country has solved this? In every country I know the security industries are filled with extreme right wingers and/or hooligans.

The security industry. A proper regulatory regime requires mandatory licensing for anyone working in the security industry, with a history of violent crime or extremism being automatic grounds for refusal of a license. You won't catch everyone, but it isn't at all difficult to weed out the obvious thugs and prevent a security industry from being "rife" or "filled" with neo-nazis.

Even the police is rife with racists, far right wingers, and even nazi sympathizers, and they'd somehow clear the security industry?

So, Bezos is choosing to be an asshole. Nice to know.

Steve Yegge didn't call him the "Dread Pirate Bezos" for no reason, you know.

https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX

If you're poor they will tell you you're batshit crazy

If you're rich or their salary depend on you, you are eclectic

I think you mean "eccentric".

Yeah, eccentric works best in english, I just translated "eclettico" from Italian, that actually means eclectic, but it is used with a slightly different meaning.

Thanks

There was once a CEO, and he was a fan of Apple, especially he liked Steve Jobs. So much so he wanted to imitate Steve Jobs. Out of all the excentric qualities Steve Jobs had, this CEO picked only that of being asshole. I imagine it was frustrating thinking here they are immigrating the great Steve Jobs and yet the company didn't grow, employees were quitting, customers were leaving because they never got features they were promised and so on.

"It's one of those irregular verbs [...] I have an independent mind, You are eccentric, He is round the twist." (from Yes, Minister)

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