> Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will be worked around.
This often puts a considerable drag on the whole project, one that can easily climb to way above the contributions of that person. Even worse, this is often not visible at the project level, as multiple people start independently avoiding this person, even finding technical work-arounds to avoid working with them; while their direct contributions are visible to everyone, making it seem like they are indispensable.
The situation with Linus is even more interesting: for years people have worked with him knowing that they sometimes have to endure his abrasive manners. Then, one day, enough people seem to have discussed this with him, and he decided to accept their feedback and change his ways. How much more successful could Linux have been had this discussion happened 10 years earlier? How many developers have quit or never started working on Linus out of social anxiety? Perhaps it's 0, perhaps it's not.
Do you mind sending me in the right direction for more info?
I was around for the infancy of Linux (I remember a friend was running ~2.1.98 because it came out before Win 98 or something like that, even though it was occasionally unstable for them), and then went in another direction, and have recently gotten back in.
Sage (previously Sarah) Sharp is the most public one for the Linux project specifically. You could probably find more by starting your search there (and enjoy wading through all the invective aimed their way 'cause oh boy was there a lot).
This often puts a considerable drag on the whole project, one that can easily climb to way above the contributions of that person. Even worse, this is often not visible at the project level, as multiple people start independently avoiding this person, even finding technical work-arounds to avoid working with them; while their direct contributions are visible to everyone, making it seem like they are indispensable.
The situation with Linus is even more interesting: for years people have worked with him knowing that they sometimes have to endure his abrasive manners. Then, one day, enough people seem to have discussed this with him, and he decided to accept their feedback and change his ways. How much more successful could Linux have been had this discussion happened 10 years earlier? How many developers have quit or never started working on Linus out of social anxiety? Perhaps it's 0, perhaps it's not.
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