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Linus Torvalds Announces Autobiography
Keith Whitsitt wrote in to say that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, is writing his autobiography. Published by HarperCollins, co-authored by David Diamond, entitled "Just for Fun:The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary". The article is pretty funny, talking about how it will reflect Torvalds "Quirky irreverent personality" as well as how it will be about business, Linus, and Linux. Hell I'll read it, but isn't Linus a bit young for the autobiography? I keep pitching my epic space opera about alien robots who infest our planet and live off celebrities dryer lint to various publishers, but nobody wants to publish a book written by a leader of mexican food, and starring a hero named Litmus VanCenturfuge and his sidekick Pipet Jerks. I keep telling them my parents would buy copies. I bet Linus will sell copies to people besides his parents.
How about Penguin?
Oi! He wrote fetchmail, among a long and varied hacking career including big emacs contributions, and being one of the main ncurses developers. He may not have done as much as Linus or RMS, but chances are he's contributed much more code to the average Linux distro than you have; I know he's added much more than I have. So, please, show some respect; he's a hacker as well as a journalist, and even if you don't agree with what he says, his experience of hacking gives him some right to be listened to.
Savant
The difference between your book and Linus' book, and why you might have a harder time getting yours out there...
;)
We already know Linus is a writer
Good luck on your space opera!
I would write the book solely to be able to answer the same old questions we see in every interview once and for all. Just get it over with. Any time they ask the same old "so what got you started?" thing, I'd just reply "RTFB" and get on with life.
Also, will the book include and audio CD with the "famous" "Hello, this is Linus Torvalds" sample?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Didn't Brittany Spears' autobiography come out a year or two ago? I would think Linus would have more to say than she did, so what the hell, he may as well get his book out there. It may have been better to wait until there's more to say on the Transmeta phase of his life, unless he wants the book to end with some uncertainty there, thus he can have a dramatic close to the book that leaves his future success in question.
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
No.
Linus has played and continues to play a part in starting a revolution in computing. Whether he did that by "reimplmenting a 30 year old OS" or by having entirely new ideas or by redecorating his house, or by shaving his head, or by anything else at all is unimportant.
The undenyable fact is that the way people (including individuals and businesses) view computers and their operating systems is changing. This is due in part to the work of Linus. That makes him a revolutionary.
Thompson and Richtie are more like visionarys than revolutionaries (acciedental or otherwise) to me. (as is RMS for that matter)
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I'd suggest Linus - The Christmas Ornament, but Hallmark already has a few I'll wager, in its Peanuts collection...
---
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Its not like you can survive selling free software... (please forget the technicalities for this post)
See.....
Linus rescue a colony of furry penguins.
Furry penguins? d00d, pengiuns have feathers. They're birds! :)
http://gabrielcain.com/
Awh come on rob, I wanna read about the robots and their brave leader Litmus!
:)
So... will the book come with a copy of Linux?
Which distribution?
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Geek Appeal?
Um so he has a honorable PHD, wrote some of the most popular free software, re-engrized the free software movement, helped develop a CPU and also has time to develop a famliy, while moving from his native land/launage. And he is how old? 30-40?
Looking at this rationally, the key item is that he wrote the Linux kernel. It had the side effect of re-energizing Stallman's free software movement, but that wasn't something Linus really did. Moving, having a job, and raising a family are not typically reasons that you write an autobiography, you know?
well, thats figures MS produces loads of BS
Pretty soon my kids will be begging for Linus pajamas and lunch boxes.
What fucking morons! You took action on what I pointed out to you, and moderated me down. Well I don't give a shit about my karma in this environment, so eat my fuck and die.
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Adler
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
If you're looking to publicize your own autobiography, why are you posting anonymously Mr. Gore?
As someone else here said, there's an important difference between "revolutionary" and "visionary." You might call RMS the visionary and Linus the revolutionary. Linus didn't start out with the goal of writing a world-class operating system for the masses -- it was just a neat hack at the beginning. Stallman had that idea, though. The difference is that Linus went out and did what Stallman only talked about. As such, there is room in the world for both visionaries andrevolutionaries -- in fact, they're both necessary, and they have a symbiotic relationship.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
aside to Taco: Don't feel too bad. The editors don't like stories from talking felines either. Can you honestly think of a better premise for a love story than the extinction of humanity? I didn't think so.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
I value Linus' contribution to the free software movement and etc... but I am absolutely against turning him into some kind of semi-God. I wouldn't buy his biography as much as I wouldn't buy Bill Gate's biography either... when will Slashdot get more serious ?
I would imagine there can be more than one. :)
yadda
THe person that modded this as insightful might need to um, how should we say, "get some" before the rest of his brain rots away. Pardon the political incorrectnous, but seein the above comment modded as insightful was just too funny not to comment on.
Bite my yammer.
See.....
Linus take on Tannenbaum and obliterate Minux
See.....
Linus take on Bill and Lynne Joltz and
leap ahead of 386BSD
See.....
Linus take on the Devil (either BSD or Bill
Gates)
See.....
Linus rescue a colony of furry penguins.
hahaha....there are some things you just shouldn't say ;P
-sK
Will there be a CVS tree which we can all contribute developments to? ;)
--------------------
That line is a joke. Humor. Fun. You see, when Linus releases a new patch collection, he (usually) prefaces it with a line similar to the above. I believe that in one of the recent releases, Linus quipped about how it had the blessing of the pope, who "(shh) nobody tell--plays Quake3 behind locked doors".
It is pretty much impossible for Linus to thoroughly test the code he releases, particularly the stuff submitted to him by other developers, which often is for hardware he doesn't have. This is part of the development process. When he releases a new mini-version, everyone gets it and tries it out, and bugs are found.
If you believe that testing in Linux is faulty, well then, sign up and do some QA, and quit your fucking whining.
I'm sure he's getting enough from Transmeta to feed the new mouth! Well, I hope, cause I could and I'm sure he's getting a lot more than me :)
Hey CmdrTaco, no offense, but if I came and worked for Slashdot, would I get a pass at the pipe too? But seriously, I don't think the guy is writing an autobiography for all the petty reasons he's already been flamed for, its just he's already done more than enough towards the digital revolution to write a book on.
Exactly typical moderation, I'd say.
If you're a jock, inflict some pain / If you're a nerd then use your brain - DAPHNE AND CELESTE
It's time for the published Space opera...
Please go immediately to http://www.iuniverse.com, submit your manuscript and slashdot yourself.
You'll sell millions of copies, obviously.
(And who said the internet wasn't your friend
davemc
Open Source Ronin
Shouldn't he be writing kernel code?? :-)
-- Thrakkerzog
It'd be co-autored by David Diamond in collaboration with Linus's parents of course.
-Daniel
P.S. Seriously though, at this point an autobiography may be a bit much; how about an interesting except from my life revolving around computing issues that have recently become popular. Lots of authors do that and they don't call it an autobiography... Like that cliford stoll book or something, but better.
Um. No. It's his time, and he can do with it what he chooses.
But anyway, it's probably not going to be written that much by Linus anyway. In general with these celebrity books co-author means ghostwriter.
Typically an author will pass interesting titbits, or perhaps chapters, and the ghostwriter will put them together.
Everyone does it - Bill Gates, film stars, etc.
Free Anne Tomlinson!!
I don't know about this. Linus decided to write a UNIX kernel because he didn't like Windows or MS-DOS. Brilliant, that he pulled it off. But in all honesty, he's pretty much spent the last ten years tweaking his kernel and managing other people. That's cool, but an _autobiography_?
Linus became a folk hero because of what his creation touched off. It enabled idealistic rants of a previous generation of isolated and fading UNIX geeks to go mainstream. And it isn't the kernel that gets attention any more, but KDE and Gnome and The Gimp and Apache and all the application people who are trying to conquer the world.
I expect Linus's book to be on par with "Weaving the Web," by the creator of the web, Tim Berners-Lee. It was interesting in a technical sense, but it was obvious that his views and ideas were not what people think of when they think about the web.
If anyone is interested in co-author David Diamond, you should check out this profile of Linus he wrote.
Or at least, The Register says he wrote it. Damned if I can find his name on it anywhere. Anyway, it's kind of cute.
I see Linus is now enjoying his celeb statas and trying to make a buck off his story of linux. Which there is nothing wrong with that. Linus had been very careful on how he profited from Linux. I think this is a very "safe" for him to profit from linux without stepping on alot of toes.
Linus wrote a kernel, not an OS; and in that that kernel is not quite Unix-standard, though it appears to be from outside, and it employs more modern algorithms than in the original Unix kernel, etc; so yes, the design was new. This is not however the revolutionary bit. By releasing it under the GPL he showed what would be to most computer users at that time a pretty revolutionary outlook. There were others previous to him, like RMS, who equally were revolutionaries in that sense, but that doesn't make Linus less of one, considering that Free Software / Open Source had then a mere fraction of the popularity it enjoys today.
Savant
How did he know so much about running, organizing, succesfully managing a project of such size when he was just a grad student?
I know it didn't all just happen over night, but the man has some serious organizational skills. Did he have a mentor, or was it just natural?
Then there could also be different distributions of the biography. The main advantage to purchasing a copy of a distribution would be the TECH SUPPORT to help the user get throught th BIG words.
And Cmdr Taco and Malda could open a new web site:
www.biodot.org
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Yes. But your chances of getting your changes merged are small. :-). Actually, it might just be non-Free...
Geez, maybe he should give time management seminars, because he seems to be doing a hell of a job managing his.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Stallman has a special place in the book "Hackers" by Stephen Levy. The is the book that dubbed him the "last true hacker". Incidentally, many, such as ESR, believe that Linus was the man to disprove that title.
The book focuses on the history of computing in three phases, the infamous TMRC / AI Lab at MIT, the Homebrew Computer Club, and the early days of video game software for Apples. However, there's a small section at the end about RMS and GNU where Stallman gets to air some of his ideas. It's a nice way to close the book, because it connects back to the tradition that started at MIT, and was almost destroyed after the days of the Altair. And I, for one, have always found RMS's mission interesting.
Anyway, whether or not you like Stallman, Levy's book is a good read for any geek. It's a great way to connect with hackerdom's roots.
--Lenny
PS- I also recommend "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. It's a good look at the hardware side of things, and though it was written in the 70's, much of the book is still relevent today.
That's very unlikely, especially considering its an AUTO-biography, meaning Linus writes about himself.
Jeremy
http://www.tech-seek.com It's for sale.. if interested, email me
JeremyI TechSeek- http://www.tech-seek.com
A quote leaked from the manuscript at the publisher:
"I wanted to create an OS better than the example OS use in my OS class: MINIX. I never did succeed in making Linux better, but I had a lot of fun on the way."
Doesn't this say it all?
A distro CD inside the back cover?
Um, I think perhaps that you meant "self-effacing", as in he modest about his accomplishments. Of course, I did have a good laugh envisioning Linus carving a Windows logo onto his chest or some other act of hideous defacement.
Plus really Linuz put in the "final peice" of the 100% pure GNU useable OS "puzzle". I say "useable" because not many people are using the hurd kernel is a productive envoriment.
Linuz (with the help of others) slaped that final kernel peice in and said "Done, there you got %100 hackable freely avaiable OS with all the tools and toys you could ask for"
Sure there where/is other %100 GPL OS out there, but not really as mainstream as GNU/Linux and not as useable as GNU/Linux.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
:
----------
Technoli
Will it be open source? Can I contribute?
How can one write an autobiography if they are dead? Look up autobiography in the dictionary.
And remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
A self-documenting OS
It's a joke, retard.
hey you can't blame the guy... guess transmeta is did not meet all the media fuzz and stuff (see it rhymes), a man's gotta look for alternatives to make a livin.
Istigkeit -"is-ness" being and becoming & i'dfiying it with the mathematical abstraction of the idea
Now now, that's not a fair comparison at all... virtually everyone has more to say than Brittany Spears. Yeesh. ;)
Maybe. Maybe if it's something like the excelent Hackers, (which was reviewed on Slashdot not too long ago, and i have read twice) just maybe i'll buy it...
:)
But yes, Linus is far to young to be writing an autobiography.
its released as open source / with copyleft; everything else wouldnt really fit the story ;-)
So you're saying that 2.4 could be out the door already if he hadn't been writing this??? Grr! :)
Mike Roberto
- GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
Who should play Linus in the movie? John Denver would have been good, but he needed more flying lessons.
Arm yourself with knowledge.
Gee, I thought ESR was the Accidental Revolutionary.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
It seems I've made another zit-pincher mad...... Oh well, not all of us are "in" enough to go to work on a skate board.
"Oblivion is just a click away." -Aazz
He'll be able to release updates over the years, and see a greater profit.
Yeah, Hes got another kid now and daddy has to make some extra money to feed the new mouth!!
www.droppingdimes.com
You can write a biography on anyone, so go right ahead. The hard part is finding information without just pasting press clippings together. You'll do best if the subject and their friends and associates are involved. Otherwise you just make stuff up, but then it's called a "novel" not a "biography".
hmmmm interesting story line...
maybe you should go take a nap?
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Is this gonna slow down the production of the 2.4 kernel? I personally think he should be concentrating on the kernel more than a book!
I wonder if he'll write his autobiography by accident, like he did his favorite OS.
He's written a few books, probably with the help of a few ghost writers here and there. I did a search on amazon.com and here's what came up http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-fo rm/107-2450847-6004559 - not all are by Bill himself, but a few are, including, "the Road Ahead" which is a rather interesting look from a 1996 perspective.
"When I want to do something mindless to relax, I reinstall Windows 95." - JLG
"AHA, I say! So THAT'S how you make money when you give your code away..." - Snow's PHB
Here are the mandatory comments:
:)
1. It should be Open Source
2. Linus is too boring
3. (Offtopic) Gore/Bush sucks.
Ok, here's my point. This actually sounds interesting. Every interview Linus has given has shown him to be more articulate and interesting than the majority of people in the so-called technology industry today. His story is interesting to me, and he doesn't have to be 65 to have lived an exciting life. I'm not completely sure why people think you have to be old to have really experienced much. We're talking about an individual who in university started writing some code that is now on over 5% of the computers out there right now. The amount of fame, and infamy he has simultaneously recieved is astounding.
Also, I'd love to hear his take on the amount of hype, money and politics surrounding Linux, especially considering how he has long avoided those issues.
There are a few programmers I really respect (among Michael Abrash, Carmack, Linus and Stallman) and of those, I have enjoyed reading their writings, technical or otherwise; I'm looking forward to this book, even if I can't download it for free off the internet.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
Maybe the title should be "Linus in a Nutshell"
LINUS - "Help, Help i'm in a nutshell..."
*Shrug* better get some more coffee, sorry...
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Jeez if is coinicides with kernel releases we might actually have it before he is in a geriatric ward. I wonder if it will have USB support?
I'd buy a copy. So you have three preorders now. what publishing company could resist that media hype?
-Teiresias
ofcourse you can be too young to write your autobiography... you have to be able to write in the first place..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Heh. On the other hand, she did a great job with semiconductor physics. Maybe it's time for "Britney's Guide to the Linux Kernel".
This will be the chapter where the world is first exposed to your true arrogance, your insecurities,your odd behaviorisms, and all that stuff you didn't want them to see initially. Just think about how they will react. Getting that monkey off your back has to be a taste of true freedom that will enable you do go that much farther next time. This is a critical step in character development for the character of you in the real biography.
I say that whoever signed this deal also extends one to Stallman. I know that cat has some stories to tell.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Oh wait --
It kind of makes you wonder how they looked, and how they thought when they were, say, 30 years old. I can imagine, if a person writes an autobiography when he's 80, he is going to have a different angle on his life when he was 20 than he does when he writes it at 30.
Even better, write the stuff down before you do the revolution. That's going to be something for the historians of the future. (Hm, I've copied everything I've got to tape the last couple of years, now it's time to do something revolutionary.... :-) )
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
i think unix was about 20 years old only when linus started to work on linux
although i do agree with you that it's not that revolutionary.
ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
Linus - The Action Figure
Linus - The Breakfast Cereal
Linus - The Fragrance
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
I keep pitching my epic space opera about alien robots who infest our planet and live off celebrities dryer lint to various publishers, but nobody wants to publish a book written by a leader of mexican food, and starring a hero named Litmus VanCenturfuge and his sidekick Pipet Jerks.
Would this be an autobiography? Dude, you're more whacked than I thought...
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Is he going to write a program to automate the making of his 'autobiography'?
What next, film, TV, stage ...
Geek dramas have made the screen such as the "Pirates of Silicon Valley". What is necessary is "dramatic content". This means a conflict that builds into a climax and characters with quirks. In Pirates, the conflict was PC newcomers versus established computing and Apple vs. MicroSoft. Bill and Steve had numerous quirks. What about Linus? I guess not as dramatic.
Wasn't the printed version of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar - Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary"?
So who is the Accidental Revolutionary? ESR or Linus? Or maybe it's all the people who are celebrities in the world of Open Source (so I guess RMS is an Accidental Revolutionary as well).
I don't think that this is offtopic. Where are my mod points at?
Ok so you express you negative opinion about it, and group it together with other things, but don't really give a reason why you dislike it.
Either you are joking or truly dislike the idea of it. Could you state why you disklike the idea of it? Just wondering.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
I for one would steal the autobiography of CmdrTaco from the shelves of my favorite bookstore or genetically modified taco section of my local grocery. As far as Linus goes..., I think he should publish his in the form of an incomprensible free code file on MSN, just to confuse the eXecs at MS. Will we learn about his sex life and his struggle to raise geekdom to kingdom, or will this just be another of those "poor struggling genius, socially conscious, truly democratic, power-to-the-people-who-can-afford-a-laptop," trips?
"Oblivion is just a click away." -Aazz
...the book will be available for free download. After all, information wants to be free, right?
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Raising a people's army and overthrowing the government isn't new, it's been done thousands of times before, but that doesn't stop it being revolutionary.
Wasn't Drew Barrymore 15 when she wrote her autobiography?
Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry about that, I posted too early in the morning to be coherent (it's not noon yet!;-).
Bite my yammer.
Will it have C comments in it? :) will it be formed of all his comments in the kernel sources? :)
--
Gate's The Road Ahead, was published by Penguin.
did bill gates write his autobiography?
sheep for the sheep human for the human i just wonna keep my soul alive
Will Microsoft Press print it? I hear they do make some other good technical books
HarperCollins? Couldn't he have picked a better publisher? As far as I'm concerned, HarperCollins has the worst reputation for publishing tabloid quality books of any publisher that I know.
If I recall correctly, HarperCollins published Canter and Siegel's book, "How to make a fortune on the information superhighway". Canter and Siegel were the green card attorneys that "invented" spamming to newsgroups. They ruined usenet for everyone. And HarperCollins published their book, explaining how to do it.
I still have my original Joel Furr "Green Card" T-Shirt.
--
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
Will writing this inhibit his work on the kernel?
-sK
So, reimplmenting a 30 year old OS is revolutionary now?
Thompson and Richtie may be revolutionaries for designing unix in the first place, but redoing someone elses work hardly seems revolutionary.
Heck, someone is going to call Gjs Van Sant's Psycho original next...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
It's not a bad idea. It's a good opportunity to explain the Linux movement to the avg joe. All they know about Linux comes from zdnet and M$ FUD! BTW, if billyg writes a bio why can't Linus (I only hope he won't write as bill did that factoring lagre prime numbers is one of the most important challenges computing will face in the future ROTLF!)
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Here's an interesting thought - publish hardcopy editions of the web diaries of various notables.
While an autobiography might look a bit shaky, something like, oh, The Compiled Diary of Alan Cox might be taken more seriously by the geek crowd.
OTOH, Linus's autobiography will probably sell like hotcakes to the business crowd that's just heard about this "Linux" thing.
It seems like only yesterday that he was about to be hit by a bus... and if Bill Gates pulls the right strings, it will probably be a CIA agent driving. Of course we'll never know that for a fact.
--
Will there be a "standard edition" that just includes the basic dates, places, and facts while deluxe versions come with all of the stuff we really want?
Will we have tech support numbers to call when something in the autobiography does not work out the way that we hoped it would?
Will we be able to install additional information using RPM?
I thought about that...I think I meant to type fluffy...well, the babies ones look furry.
Anyway, I await with eagerness for it, and I'm sure it will live up to expectations.
--Demand the establishment of the government in its rightful home at Disneyland.-- --
The kids love this one.
After Steven King made the historic forway into e-publishing, I'm wondering if Linus will also take the opportunity to publish his book under a special or alternative license that will free it from possible future draconian publishing restrictions.
Do you think that the negatives still outweigh the benefits (ie., getting his contact turned down), or is it about time to start really pushing our open ideals to other industries.
--
Rob Carlson
There's an idea. An open source biography, with Linus (and co-author) retaining 'control' over the kernel (birthplace, schooling, etc.). The rest of it put out on the web to see if other writers can improve it. It gets submitted to testers (editors) to see which version works best and is then released. Of course, bootleg copies of alternate versions will float around. And naturally, it will be free, although anyone can develop add-ons and components that they wish to charge for...
Heh...
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
I loathe the idea of an autobiography of Linus Torvalds because the book's primary topic would inevitably revolve around how Linus tweaked with Unix, made it work (marginally), and released the source code for free. Furthermore, there's an almost 100% chance that the text would be peppered with megalomaniacal remarks, making this autobiography reminiscent of Mein Kampf.
Furthermore, the combination of a megalomaniacal mentality with a slapdash work ethic is disastrous. You shouldn't be able to take over the world with a folly, but Linus has proven that he can. One example is a quote from Linus himself:
That line alone makes me hate Linus and fear his creation. If Nikita Khruschev had that same sense of pig-headed ethics, then we wouldn't be here. The Earth would be a cratered mass stuck in nuclear winter due to certain events which took place in October 1962.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Hey Taco, why not write your Space Opera (although it sounds more like pulp sci-fi to me, but heh), and then submit it to Bookzilla. Or, there are other alternatives. Some of them even promise distrobution to Barnes & Nobel if you pay a small fee (and no, it isn't that large). I realize you were joking, but it is an alternative that I have considered extensively for my personal diatribe like philosophical ramblings (that I know wouldn't get past the first "money first" editor in any publishing house).
On-topic: I will definitely check out Linus's autobiography. I'll bet it will make one hell of a good story, especially if it is as self-defacing as some of his interviews.
Bite my yammer.
When he wants to publish "Linus Version Two: Just Outta Beta" forty years from now, will HarperCollins still have the rights?
He's just getting a head start, just like other famous "younger" people like Tiger Woods. When he's in his seventies, he'll publish all over again to appeal to the gray-haired Geek Generation.
--
Rob Carlson
I walked into barnes and noble the other day and saw 90% of the new books shelf covered with autobiographys. Mostly of ordinary peeps who just wanted fame. This tends to make people like me not care enough to look for autobiographys for people that i might care about the life of. Now, if someone like linus wrote a novel, i'd buy 3 copies right off, but an autobiography i wouldnt have even noticed released if it hadnt' been /.'d
I am !amused.
I think that Linus should do what Greenspun did when negotiating the rights to his book "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing". The publisher got to put the book in print, but Greenspun retained the right to put the book online. Brilliant, I say. Linus should do the same.
In this day and age, you could be burned out by age 30, so you should write your book as soon as possible... Can you say Netscape founder? Who? Exactly!
=-=-=-=-=
"Do you hear the Slashdotters sing,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
I think that Linus should do what Greenspun did when negotiating the rights to his book "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing". The publisher got to put the book in print, but Greenspun retained the right to put the book online. Brilliant, I say. Linus should do the same.
Penguins wearing nothing but a hat! Right here at The Linux Pimp