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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"."
I used to jokingly call my (now ex) girlfriend a hood ornament.
Excuse me, but some of us female slashdotters like hearing about how Torvald looks. He's cuter than I imagined he would be.
Can I bum a sig?
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.
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.