Nah, it’s like that on most (all?) Slavic languages. It’s метр in Russian for example which is exactly metr just in Cyrillic.

The Persians got them from the Indians.

Romans got like 80% of everything they stood for from the Greeks.

A joke goes: The Greek invented sex. The Romans later improved upon the idea by introducing women to it.

It is similar in that they use characters from their alphabet as numerals but not exactly the same way as the Romans. Greek numerals are decimal, based on powers of 10, just like Roman and Arabic. The units from 1 to 9 are assigned to the first nine letters of the old Ionic alphabet from alpha to theta. Instead of reusing these numbers to form multiples of the higher powers of ten, however, each multiple of ten from 10 to 90 was assigned its own separate letter from the next nine letters of the Ionic alphabet from iota to koppa. Each multiple of one hundred from 100 to 900 was then assigned its own separate letter as well, from rho to sampi.

Today’s right-wing US-americans would call this communism, if they could read

The USA

Btw I use Debian

I know, I was joking

Because so many were stolen?

Central Europe: a term invented by the less eastern eastern europe so they stop getting called eastern europe

Stealing cars

romania (and the rest of eastern europe) have almost non-existent theft rates

That’s because all the thieves went to steal in the west

Why not both?

I agree with what you said in general.

But if you get really angry because your employee did something wrong, then that’s a problem on the side of the manager and not on the side of the employee.

This is probably taught in manager courses in order to protect their subordinates from managerial outbursts, which is a good cause, but they’re not quite right.

The Linux kernel is Torvalds life work. He literally spent most of the time he has on this planet on it, as did thousands others. Instead of watching his children grow, he made sure the planet gets a great operating system. It takes immeasurable effort to keep a vast software project in a good state - most large organisations with many times the resources fail to do so.

The maintainers behaviour represents a complete disregard for this sacrifice. They are showing through their actions that they don’t care that Torvalds and many others spent the little time they have on this planet on this software project instead of more fulfilling and joyful activities. I cannot imagine many more hurtful or disrespectful insults than this. It’s not far from saying their efforts are null and thus their life wasted.

I am saying all of this because I feel that you are speaking as a leader in a company, where you make sure other people’s money is spent productively. This not at all the same thing as what Torvalds is doing, because it’s not just a job, it is his literal life or life’s work.

This doesn’t excuse the behaviour, obviously - but it makes it very human. It’s good that he changed. I just hope we can find a middle ground between forced business speak and emotional outbreaks.

I agree! Making someone aware of your feelings doesn’t mean exploding. You can just tell them. “I am very sad, frustrated and angry due to your actions. Please don’t do this again.” Is very clear and hurts no one.

I am not and was not advocating for venting - just for communicating emotion. This can be as simple as:

“Your actions have deeply frustrated me and caused great anger on top of [technical reasons]. I would ask that you be more careful in the future.”

This ensures the reader not only understands they hurt Linux with their actions but also another human being. Many people will be more careful if they know they caused personal pain to an actual human being and not just to an abstract technical object such as a codebase.

I know I am going against established cultural norms in western business context - please don’t disregard my proposal just because it contradicts established culture.

Ignoring emotions is very unhealthy. I understand that it is seen as desirable in a business context, but it is very unhealthy and detrimental in the long run.

Reading this version I wouldn’t know the writer is deeply disappointed, frustrated and angry. It’s good you’re trying to improve the letter but this is exactly what many people don’t like about it: it changes the meaning. Perhaps you could include a paragraph which conveys this, such that the reader understands the gravity of the situation better.

Why not? No freedom of speech in the USA?

Ask the employees whether they feel that they’re being treated well and paid correctly?