> One can "try to be altruistic" all they want but if they cannot package it in nice words, then they are merely going to be [rightly] ridiculed for the "attempt"
But that's not what actually happened, as far as I can see; Linus' post on the GCC bug tracker appears to have gotten the GCC developers to pay attention to the bug, not to ridicule Linus for using nice language on their bug tracker but insulting language on his own mailing list.
> the mere fact that Mr Torvalds can get it right in one context but not in another shows that he in fact knows the difference between right and wrong
I would say it shows that he knows the difference between one context and another. Whether or not that difference is also "the difference between right and wrong" is one of the points at issue; you can't just assume that your personal opinion about that is shared by everybody. As you pointed out in an earlier post, it's up to each of us to decide that for ourselves.
> But that's not what actually happened, as far as I can see; Linus' post on the GCC bug tracker appears to have gotten the GCC developers to pay attention to the bug, not to ridicule Linus for using nice language on their bug tracker but insulting language on his own mailing list.
The 'ridicule' I was referring to is this firestorm of a thread: the mere fact that we are even talking about this on HackerNews (and the wider Internets) and that a large majority of the commenters here agree with me that it was, in fact, deserving of ridicule.
> Whether or not that difference is also "the difference between right and wrong" is one of the points at issue;
Whether one can [in his own reasoning] get all the way to 'wrong' from 'adolescent, silly & childish' is really quite a minor issue to me. But, I think it's pretty obvious to most adults that it was in fact pretty adolescent, silly & childish (i.e., socially under-developed) and that's enough for me.
Further, if I had to choose one form of overly adolescent behavior, it would be the fun type coming from 'brogrammers' and startup culture rather than this trite anti-social and uber-negative poison from 'hardcore Linux(TM) hackers' (but I can certainly understand that this is merely a preference of mine in particular).
> The 'ridicule' I was referring to is this firestorm of a thread
Which is not going to have any effect on the Linux kernel or the GCC compiler. I'm not participating here because I think it will change anything substantive; I'm just doing it because I feel like it.
> a large majority of the commenters here agree with me
Have you actually counted?
> I think it's pretty obvious to most adults that it was in fact pretty adolescent, silly & childish
I think you are overestimating how many "adults" agree with you.
But that's not what actually happened, as far as I can see; Linus' post on the GCC bug tracker appears to have gotten the GCC developers to pay attention to the bug, not to ridicule Linus for using nice language on their bug tracker but insulting language on his own mailing list.
> the mere fact that Mr Torvalds can get it right in one context but not in another shows that he in fact knows the difference between right and wrong
I would say it shows that he knows the difference between one context and another. Whether or not that difference is also "the difference between right and wrong" is one of the points at issue; you can't just assume that your personal opinion about that is shared by everybody. As you pointed out in an earlier post, it's up to each of us to decide that for ourselves.