> I can think of many times Ted was overly hyperbolic, but he was ultimately correct. Here is the part of the Linux project I don't like sometimes, which was recently described well in this recent thread. Being correct, or at least being subjectively correct by having extremely persuasive arguments, yet being toxic... is still toxic and unacceptable.
I want to say that I am thankful in this world that I am a truly anonymous nobody who writes codes for closed-source mega corp CRUD apps. Being a tech "public figure" (Bryan Cantrill calls it "nerd famous") sounds absolutely awful. Every little thing that you wrote on the Internet in the last 30 years is permanently recorded (!!!), then picked apart by every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Internet rando. My ego could never survive such a beating. And, yet, here we are in 2025, where Ted T'so continues to maintain a small mountain of file system code that makes the Linux world go "brrr".
Hot take: Do you really think you could have done better over a 30 year period? I can only answer for myself: Absolutely fucking not.
I, for one, am deeply thankful for all of Ted's hard work on Linux file systems.
There are plenty of "nerd famous" people who manage it by just not being an asshole. If you're already an asshole being "nerd famous" is going to be rough, yes, but maybe just don't be one?
Hot take: Do you really think you could have done better over a 30 year period? I can only answer for myself: Absolutely fucking not.
I, for one, am deeply thankful for all of Ted's hard work on Linux file systems.