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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"."
Is it just me, or is Linus' attitude towards Linux, Microsoft, etc. one of nonchalance? It just doesn't seem that he cares one way or another as to what happens. Is this the mark of a man of utter confidence? Or, is this someone who is just relaxed to the point of almost being stoned?
Having never met him personally, I'm curious as to what people who have interacted with him in person make of his personality.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
The fact that Linus seems to lead an `every-day' sort of "boring" life (his word, not mine) just makes him that much more likeable, imho.
We couldn't have asked for a better hero.
do() || do_not();
Although your article about Linus Torvalds did a nice job of giving readers a good idea of the kind of person he is, I wonder why you felt it necessary to devote a paragraph to bashing Richard Stallman, with the only connection to Mr. Torvalds being his non-response to questions regarding Mr. Stallman. Moreover, I was disappointed by the fairly gross inaccuracies in your bashing. As you acknowledge, Richard Stallman is a forefather of the Free Software movement. He leads a philosophical school of thought that many consider to be fanatical, and he is not shy about defending his principles. This you also acknowledge.
What you completely misrepresent, however, is his contribution to the operating system you refer to as "Linux." He, and others working with him (not Mr. Torvalds) developed many essential components still used in most of the free Unix-like operating systems used today, including all variants based on Linux. These components include compilers and assemblers (essential for application development), text editors, various essential utilities, and many, many more applications. These people have, however, failed so far in producing the most essential piece in a working Unix subsitute: a viable replacement for the Unix kernel. This is what Mr. Torvalds did, and that is what Linux is: a kernel.
Thus, the 6 million lines of code in the Linux kernel form only a small part of a complete Linux-based operating system. There are many other components, and a large number of them are GNU software without which the operating system would be useless. For this Mr. Stallman would like you to call the complete operating system a GNU/Linux system. Frankly, I don't think this is too much to ask. Also, please note that no one demands that you call "Torvalds' work" GNU/Linux. They simply ask that you not use the umbrella term "Linux" to refer to everything working with the Linux kernel (the only part which is Mr. Torvald's work).
You write, "Torvalds released the kernel of his operating system well before GNU produced a reliable one of its own," as if there is some kind of competition which GNU software writers lost, and about which they are now whining. In reality, Mr. Torvalds did not write his own operating system; he wrote a kernel that worked with the operating system GNU was already developing, and today we use both together.
Many disagree with Mr. Stallman's ideals, and find him to be a generally unlikable character, and you may be one of them. But to deny his significant contributions to Linux-based operating systems out of ignorance or spite is simply unacceptable journalism.
Chris, I have nothing against Mr. Stallman. I've never met him nor spoke to him, though I watched the documentary "Revolutionary OS" and found him rather engaging. He seems a man of principle, even if I believe he's too much of a purist for his own good, and for the good of the cause.
While I appreciate your taking the time to write so thoughtful a note, I respectfully disagree with your core point. It's an issue I've thought a lot about. The kernel is hardly only a small part of an OS. To me what you and Mr. Stallman are asking--that we in the media call Linux instead GNU/Linux--is akin to suggesting that beef stew would more accurately be called beef, carrot and potato stew. Sure, carrots and potatoes are absolutely essential, but boiled down to its essence its beef.
For the record, I did a lot of research on this point, and didn't non-chalantly decide to use Linux as opposed to GNU/Linux. I made a decision--and halfway through the piece acknowledge that some would prefer GNU/Linux.
By the by, I never said Mr. Torvalds wrote his own operating system, as your letter suggests. Of course it was a world full of programmers who did that.
Thanks for taking the time to write,
Gary Rivlin
It would seem fairer to me to say that this would have made the article be about both Stalman's work and Torvalds' work.
Stallman may be smart and may have accomplished great things, but his actions bespeak a petulant toddler more than a great man of vision.
Some people seem to perceive Stalman as resentful of Torvalds because Linux stole the spotlight and rendered GNU a distant also-ran. I don't share this perception. I believe that Stalman and Torvalds have very different agendas, which happen to overlap in Linux. Stalman is promoting the idea of Free (liberated) Software. Torvalds is trying to build an operating system.
Put another way, Torvalds has no particular allegiance to free software. The fact that he has licensed Linux under the GPL is incidental not idealogical; it is a means to the end of improving quality and development speed. If there was a non-free way to improve Linux on an ongoing basis, Linus might well adopt it. Stalman never would.
I think it's interesting to compare what our world might look like if either Stalman or Torvalds had never existed. Perhaps if Stalman hadn't come along we'd have Linux but no GNU and no free software ideology (fathoming how a non-free linux could have gathered mass support is left as an exercise to someone other than me). Whereas perhaps if Torvalds hadn't come along, we'd have GNU plus free software ideology but nobody who was as gifted at managing the complex process of kernel development. If it had to come down to one or the other, I'd actually take the world without Torvalds. Even though my definition of "visionary" fits Stalman much better than it fits Torvalds, my reasons for prefering the Stalman world are practical: I believe that the process established by Stalman would have soon enough given rise to someone like Torvalds who could have done approximately as well. People with Torvalds' skill are by no means common, but open source has a very strong natural tendency to distill the uncommon from the common.
People like Stalman who have the vision of a radically different system of values, who proceed from conceiving of the vision to implementing its foundation, who are courageous enough to unequivocally say publicly where they are trying to go... and to actually have those values make a radical and lasting difference for the better after only twenty years... that's my idea of a hero.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
RMS is in the realm of politics - if we look too much at his technical acheivements, great though they are like gcc - they are overshadowed his by claim to ownership of emacs (he wrote text editor macros that others later incorportated into a new program) to the extent that he forked it by appointing a new developer when the developer at the time added X windows support (which would not advance the cause of the hurd - since the hurd didn't support X at the time).
After claims like that, the grudge against Trolltech and anyone the uses BSD or other licences and the whole gnu/linux jumping onto the bandwagon and using it for your own ends thing - and stubbonly pushing the same line in every interview, we can only trust RMS to say how wonderful an idea the GPL is.
I see the big difference is that Linus tells people not to see him to be a hero - and points out the contribution of others, while RMS goes out of his way to get credit for himself or his group for work done by someone else. It was said long ago that if RMS wanted to call it LiGnuX or gnu/linux all he had to do was release a distribution of that name - and the actual work put in would justify naming rights. The software world is far removed from the world of academic politics - we care about what the code can do and if we can all use it, not who has a big name so they can get grants. Where the two collide you get things like gnu/linux, where one group approprites the name of the other to get more publicity.
RMS didn't invent the idea of Free software, he only turned it into a political thing. There was free software before RMS and there continues to be free software outsided of GNU, think BSD. It seems to me that reading the changlogs for OpenBSD 3.4 there is an effort to remove and replace the GNU software, or at least a good portion of it with BSD licenced stuff. RMS was not quite the absolute requirement as he is made out to be for Linux, it just allowed things to speed up much faster then if it hadnt been there.
Don't get me wrong, I use Linux dayly, and there for many of GNUs tools, I have nothing against them, and nothing but respect for the developers that wrote and maintain the software. I just dont like or agree with RMS's political crusade. BSD makes free software for the sake of making good software thats to be used where you need good software, it just seems like a better idea to me.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."