Linus Torvalds apologises for 'unprofessional' rants over Linux

Torvalds' blunt but entertaining emails likely to become a thing of the past

Linux Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has apologised for his ‘unprofessional' emails and promised to get help. Torvalds will take a break from leading the development of Linux in the meantime.

The admission was made in a message to the Linux mailing list over the weekend, headed: "Linux 4.19-rc4 released, an apology, and a maintainership note".

In addition to the usual small talk about driver fixes and kernel updates, Torvalds also wrote at length about "maintainership and the kernel community" in which he admitted that he had "been ignoring some fairly deep-seated feelings in the community".

He continued: "I am not an emotionally empathetic kind of person and that probably doesn't come as a big surprise to anybody. Least of all me. The fact that I then misread people and don't realise (for years) how badly I've judged a situation and contributed to an unprofessional environment is not good."

This admission comes after people in the Linux community had confronted Torvalds about his attitude, he goes on to admit.

"My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not okay and I am truly sorry.

"The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that, hey, I need to change some of my behaviour, and I want to apologise to the people that my personal behaviour hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely."

In response, he added, he will be taking some time off and will "get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately". Greg Kroah-Hartman will finish up the 4.19 release in Torvalds' absence.

However, Torvalds asserted that he wasn't planning on walking away from Linux.

"This is not some kind of ‘I'm burnt out, I need to just go away' break. I'm not feeling like I don't want to continue maintaining Linux. Quite the reverse. I very much do want to continue to do this project that I've been working on for almost three decades.

"This is more like the time I got out of kernel development for a while because I needed to write a little tool called ‘git'. I need to take a break to get help on how to behave differently and fix some issues in my tooling and workflow.

"And, yes, some of it might be ‘just' tooling. Maybe I can get an email filter in place so at when I send email with curse-words, they just won't go out. Because, hey, I'm a big believer in tools, and at least some problems going forward might be improved with simple automation.

"I know when I really look ‘myself in the mirror' it will be clear it's not the only change that has to happen, but hey... You can send me suggestions in email."

This came to a head after this year's Linux Maintainers' Summit was moved from one continent to another entirely because Torvalds had accidentally booked a family holiday in Edinburgh at the same time.

While Torvalds suggested the event go ahead without him in Vancouver, Canada the Program Committee decided to moved it to Edinburgh instead. The Maintainers' Summit is an invitation-only workshop where Linux process and development issues - nothing technical - will be discussed among around the 30 leading Linux luminaries.

Computing ran a three-part interview with Torvalds in 2012, shortly after he picked-up the Millennium Technology Prize.