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Wired Interview with Linus Torvalds

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

Tones125 writes "Wired has a lengthy interview with Linus Torvalds contrasting the tedium of his humble life with his superhero cult status, and also briefly mentioning his take on the SCO mess, Richard Stallman and John "maddog" Hall. My favourite quote: "He jokingly refers to himself as Linux's hood ornament"."

3 of 453 comments (clear)

  1. Horrid misrepresentaion of history by odie_q · · Score: 3, Informative

    Quite sad really, the way he dismisses Richard Stallman and the GNU project as a failed project predating Linux and now trying to cash in on Linux' good name by renaming it GNU/Linux.

    Stallman refused to appear in the article unless the reporter got his terminology straight, which is reported as "Stallman insists Torvalds' work should properly be called GNU/Linux, because early contributors adapted GNU components for Linux - never mind that the Linux core is non-GNU and now approaches 6 million lines of code."

    He further reports that "He obstinately rejects the term open source despite its now near universal use, preferring free software, the name he coined."

    If the reporter had checked his facts just a little bit, he would have realised that GNU/Linux refers to GNU systems using the Linux kernel. Further, he would learn and that open source was coined to renounce some of the ideas behind free software. The names can never be interchangable.

    The article also clearly states that while Linus started hacking on a kernel, he later wrote an entire operating system. It is quite clear that the writer actually believes this, despite being told otherwise by the actual original creator of the operating system most oftenly used with Linux. Why he chose not to check this claim baffles me.

    As someone who believes that a correct retelling of history is crucial to progress, I am appalled at this blatant disregard of the truth.

    --
    ...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
  2. Re:True costs of Linux by stienman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ripped from here and here and some mandrake forums. Earliest post appears in February of this year, but it may be earlier.

    -Adam

  3. Re:Stallman declined to be interviewed ... by Bob+Uhl · · Score: 2, Informative

    Linux is the operating system. An OS is a bit of code responsible for the allocation of resources: CPU, RAM, disk, hardware.

    The GNU tools are even the only thing in the basic operating environment, although they are a large part of what makes it so grand. The GNU project should get credit for its great work, but so too should XFree86, Postgresql, KDE (I dislike it myself, but...), nethack and so on.

    Probably the best credit that can be given is to call what Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake and friends distribute a free software/open source system.