Slashdot Mirror
Wired Interview with Linus Torvalds
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"."
This is more true than you know. According to the article, Stallman declined to be interviewed for the article unless the article used "GNU/Linux" instead of "Linux" throughout. Which would have effectively made the article about him and not Linus.
Stallman may be smart and may have accomplished great things, but his actions bespeak a petulant toddler more than a great man of vision.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
It's what I would expect. See he prolly has more important things to worry about. E.g. the next kernel, his job, feeding his family then defending the next tit-for-tat msft vs. linux flame war.
Personally I would be concerned if all he did was fan the flame wars...
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The interviewer seems to hold a grudge against Stallman for refusing the interview and completely misstates the GNU/Linux discussion. He actually writes:
But this is bullocks. Linux is just a kernel. Completely unusuable without things like ls and bash for example. And all those components are GNU components. Even the compiler to produce that kernel is GNU. The list goes on. Using Linux for the entire package is just as wrong as using just GNU.
Calling something Linux without acknowledging all the years Stallman has spend writing the tools that make a Unix kernel possible is wrong and hypocritical. And if Stallman didn't defend that, who would?
If I had a sig, I would put it here.
"And although Torvalds released the kernel of his operating system well before GNU produced a reliable one of its own, Stallman insists Torvalds' work should properly be called GNU/Linux, because early contributors adapted GNU components for Linux"
I couldn't image a more incorrect way to describe the GNU/Linux vs. Linux debate. could someone due a little research when writing an article? All the author would ahve to do is read ONE webpage on www.fsf.org to see how biased and wrong this is.
I doubt Linus would agree with that statement. Unles the FSF has recently changed its stance I don't believe they have ever under any circumstances asked that a piece of software written by, or overseen by Linus be called "GNU/Linux".
I put this question to you: have you ever seen a musician who was any good on the street? I've seen a few. Very few, and mostly in Europe or high-traffic areas of New York. Instead of a cup, they had a music case open. Usually it's got quite a bit of currency at the bottom. People will stop what they are doing and applaud at the end of sets. They usually end up moving on to better things at coffee shops or Jazz clubs.
Besides, who needs food when you have code...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Everyone who writes code for the kernel does so to improve the kernel, not satisfy their ego. The ego seekers quickly get bored or disgusted and move on. Slashdot should have a similar system if you ask me.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
What all the above distribute (save Debian HURD, of course) is the Linux operating system, with an operating environment consisting of an awful lot of tools, including the GNU environment. But there's a lot additional: KDE; XFree86; Apache; Postgresql; Mozilla and more. I will grant that the base operating evironment is mostly GNU: bash, GNU ls, GNU tar, GNU this & GNU that.
An operating system is just a bit of code which manages resources. Linux is an operating system; GNU HURD is an operating system; the Darwin kernel is an operating system; the Windows kernel is an operating system. Red Hat Linux is not an operating system; Debian/HURD is not an operating system; Mac OS X, despite its name, is not an operating system; Windows is not an operating system. What they all are is distributions of OSes and certain apps, particular to each, which sit atop the OS.
I'll admit, though, that I understand the FSF's frustration. It is highly annoying when people speak of Linux and really mean the wonderful GNU toolset. It's rather infuriating, and it's unfair to the GNU Project that it not get credit for all its work. But it would be just as unfair to all the other developers and projects who have contributed to making the average Linux distro so cool to simply call a distro GNU/Linux.
An operating system is just a bit of code which manages resources. [...] the Darwin kernel is an operating system; [...] Mac OS X, despite its name, is not an operating system;
Words are defined by usage. An operating system is obviously more then a bit of code which manages resources, because the front page of the Debian website says "Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer", and because page 1 of "Getting Started Microsoft Windows 98" says "Welcome to the Microsoft Windows 98 operating system", Sun lists Solaris under Operating Systems and because, as you pointed out, Mac OS X has "operating system" embedded into its name. So basically everyone in the computing buisness uses operating system to include all the stuff that gets boxed in with a kernel, and I'd hazard to say that the consumer (including the IT consumer) expects that.