Linus Torvalds about SCO, IP, MS and Transmeta

strmcrw writes " San Jose Mercury News has an interview with Linus. He talks about about SCO vs IBM and gives his opinion on Microsoft. He also shed light on his decision to leave chip maker Transmeta for a Linux corporate software consortium, the Open Source Development Lab."

Comments

Famously outspoken?

[Realistic_Dragon]

I thought that he was mostly famous for saying 'whatever' and then just doing things his own way?

Perhaps they are confusing him with RMS.

Good interview.

[Sheetrock]

It's good to get Linux's opinions on the SCO suit. Too much attention has been given in the press to SCO's claims, which plays right into their hands. It's this type of thing that may bring Linux down, not technical issues.

It's interesting how the interviewers always seem to go into the same thread of what makes Linux great. Given the history one would never have expected it to do as well as it has; like chopsticks, which were actually invented by immigrant restaurant owners in America's mining communities in the 1800s, Linux has picked up a myth of its own that actually covers the more interesting fact that it was simply a hobby with momentum. It's a bit wierd to think that such a thing has evolved to contend with and possibly displace software actually engineered for the enterprise.

Can't wait for 2.6.

two thoughts

[rifftide]

- He sounds a bit stressed out. Maybe it's the new job + trying to get 2.6 out the door + SCO and possible depositions + the usual stuff he has to deal with. Or I'm imagining things.
- It's funny how many evolution/ecosystem type metaphors he made - maybe he's been reading the complete works of S. J. Gould or something

The beat goes on.

[Crashmarik]

Linus summed it up beautifully.

Linux keeps evolving, and diversifying, SCO is ultimately irrelevant. Heres a follow up from IDG http://www.idg.se/ArticlePages/idgnet.asp?id=4636

The one good thing that might come out of this, is there finally enough anger to get some changes in our idiotic patent and copyright systems.

Nobel peace prize

[Cheeze]

I don't know anything about the Nobel Peace Prize, but it seems like a good award the world community could bestow upon Mr Torvalds for gracing us with his forsight.

Re:The Transmeta Connection

[ocelotbob]

As a quick correction, the crusoe isn't a RISC chip. It's VLIW, which shares some design similarities, but at the same time, is much, much different.

I don't know about you, but I blame the Dutch Tulip Craze^W^W^WDot Com Bust for the lack of a Unix-optimized version of the Crusoe. The original benefit of the Crusoe's code-morphing technology was supposed to be the fact that it would be able to run nearly any other platform's code natively. Then, the bubble popped, and the Crusoe was delegated to the small market of low-power consumption x86 compatible chips.

IMO the whole thing's a shame. TMTA would have probably been a lot healthier if they would have offered a native VLIW chip in addition to the Crusoe, so that embedded people who didn't care about x86 compatibility could use this damn nice chip to provide real good, low power devices for markets such as set-top boxes, where x86 compatibility is a non-issue.

Re:Unfortunatly, SCO's case is not about IBM

[fanatic]

You're quoting Rob Enderle, who said of himself in this article (which also ashed Linux and it's supporters):

"As an analyst I have to be able to argue both sides of a position because often we are asked to step in and help justify decisions that have already been made"

I wish all of the enemies of Linux were stupid enough to say up front that their opinions belong to whoever paid them most recently.

Also, Enderle says:

"I saw what appeared to be a word-for-word copy of about every third line of code in the central module of the Linux kernel," .

You could not have a better declaration that this is bullshit if you paid him for it. No way could you take 'every third line' and some how integrate it with code from some other source and make it work. Also, if it's the "central module of the linux kernel", I think we can be pretty sure Linus wrote that himself. Enderle shows only his corruption and/or his ignorance, nothing more.