ONE year ago Mr. Linux, Linus Torvalds, was pushed out of his own project or his 'baby' -- the same thing that happened to Stallman a month ago. They made it look or seem willful, but if one examines what happened at the Linux Foundation and the FSF, respectively, then it's clear something was amiss. Pressure led to these outcomes, not free will. They decided to 'recuse' themselves. We could not help but notice that almost all comments about Torvalds articles (where he shows up) are about his appearance. We mentioned this before [1, 2]. It's very clear that it's not just down to a "bad picture" or Torvalds being less photogenic; there's a glaring deterioration in health, at least judging on purely visual criteria like skin, weight, hair.
""It's very clear that it's not just down to a "bad picture" or Torvalds being less photogenic; there's a glaring deterioration in health, at least judging on purely visual criteria like skin, weight, hair.The above article, for instance, has this comment: "Either that's an extremely unflattering photo, or it looks as though Linus may perhaps have been eating a few too many over-hearty American-sized meals recently. I genuinely didn't recognise him there, and he suddenly looks a lot older. We do all get older, unfortunately, but to ensure that we all continue to get older as gracefully and as slowly as we can, we need to look out for ourselves and keep an eye on what we eat and make sure that we get enough exercise. I'll be the first to admit that I don't always follow that advice as well as I should myself, but it's meant with the best of intentions hoping that he stays healthy and happy."
There are several more comments about this -- at least 3 -- and some were censored by the publisher (the author is a Microsoft propagandist). It even says: "This post has been deleted by its author" (responding to the above)
"Those things tend to relate to or correlate with general happiness (motivation to exercise, eat healthy foods, go out and so on)."It was similar in LWN. 7 out of 8 comments were purely about the appearance of Torvalds. They worried he had aged very fast. Those things tend to relate to or correlate with general happiness (motivation to exercise, eat healthy foods, go out and so on).
It's worrying. Reminiscent of what Julian Assange's visitors have been saying about him over the years, especially the past year (he lost 15 KG since his arrest). We don't want to come across or 'feel' like Paparazzi/tabloid, but the health of important project leaders should definitely interest us; if they're in bad shape, their projects will be too. We know who stands to benefit from that. ⬆
