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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?
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
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...
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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)
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.
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?
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.
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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.
That Clifford Stoll book you are referring to is 'The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage'.
He's since gone on to write a few more; maybe writing pays better than computing!
I agree though, that producing an autobiography at Linus' tender age is a bit ridiculous. A 'life' excerpt book sounds a much better idea. OTOH, if biographies of certain footballers get written when they are in their 20's, why shouldn't Linus jump on the bandwagon ?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
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.
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?
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?
Will it be open source? Can I contribute?
Gee, I thought ESR was the Accidental Revolutionary.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
He'll be able to release updates over the years, and see a greater profit.
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".
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 -------------------
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..
Linus - The Action Figure
Linus - The Breakfast Cereal
Linus - The Fragrance
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
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.
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
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.
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.
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My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
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!
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.
that would be an autobiodactylograph (but my greek is a little rusty I fear)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
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.
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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
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Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
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.
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Rob Carlson
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.
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.