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Linus Holds Forth On the Future of Linux
colinmc151 writes "As part of Geekcruises' Linux Lunacy cruise to Alaska, Linus Torvalds was interviewed and answered questions about where he sees the future of Linux with a particular eye towards developers. Great stuff."
The open source developers will be amongst the last to see their (volunteer) jobs exported to India and China!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Someone should tell desperate, single women about this.
There might be an explosion as the matter of women and anti-matter of geeks annihilate each other. What a way to go out with a bang, though!
Besides, Linus could use some groupies. It'll make Gates jealous at the very least.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
"psychology is so important. It made a huge difference to call it [the newest Linux kernel] 2.60 Test 1. Because we started getting a lot of bug reports from people who would never touch 2.5.79 with a ten-foot pole. Even though it was the same code. Especially on the desktop that's the only way to test it. Because desktops are just so varied that you literally have to get it tested by the user base."
I suddenly understand why 2.6 has been in the works all this time, it's brilliant. I'd think analysis like this would lend developers into more and more X.X changes instead of X.X.X.XX.X... going that deep into releases just isn't practical, especially when you're needing people to help out.
I went into science a long time ago thinking it'd be so great because it wouldn't involve people's silly perceptions and personal idiosynchrocies but I've come to find the opposite, and I've come to find that it's not always bad to have technical people be "human" after all. If that makes any sense.
In other news, I still don't know how to correctly pronounce Linux.
spacefem.com
Sub Captain: "Captain to ops." .50 cal on deck....'
Ops: "Ops here."
Captain: "I need a solution. Target bearing 323. Speed 16 knots. Distance: 5600 meters"
Ops: "Aye Aye. Solution ready."
Captain: "Tropedo room."
TR: "Aye."
Captain: "Ready and load tubes 1,3,5."
TR: "Aye. Tubes loaded and ready."
Captain: "Fire 1,3,5. Call run times!"
Fire Control: "Fish away."
Sonar: "Explosions, sir!"
Captain: "Excellent."
Sonar: "Sir, something disturbing."
Captain: "What?"
Sonar: "Strange screams of anguish."
Captain: "Huh? Don't let your emotions rule you son."
Sonar: "No sir. Just things like: 'I can't swim.' 'Where's my inhaler?' 'What? No backups?' 'Save the Anime DVDs!' 'There ain't no women and children here, save Linus first!' 'Leave RMS behind. He's old and bitter. Tis a better fate.' 'You have been, and always will be, my friend.'
Captain: 'Surface!'
Number One: 'Will we take on survivors?'
Captain: 'Prepare the
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
In his book "Just for fun" he wrote about his opinion on the microkernel architecture and mach. I don't have the book at the moment so I can't give you the actual quote, but I think a word-to-word direct translation from Finnish to English would be pretty close to "it is from ass" :)
from here:
On Apple and OS X
I never much liked Macs. All the interesting stuff is hidden away. They made the base of the house open source, but all the rest of the stuff, the wiring, is their own stuff. I don't want that to happen with Linux.
[Mac OS X] doesn't give me the warm-and-fuzzies. I actually dislike Mach a lot. I think they made a lot of bad design choices.
Less is more !
Torvalds against anything proprietary? Where have you been since Torvalds has begun using Bitkeeper (a proprietary RCS) for all his kernel development?
I think this is the wrong kind of comparison to be making. I for one never saw linux as a complete windows replacement. The desktop side of things is sort of a slowly evolving blob, as far as I've ever seen. Luckily "how it looks," isn't the reason why most people claim to use linux.
Apple is a corporation. MacOS is (for the most part) closed source. That means that when you purchase software from them, you are stuck getting updates and fixes from them. I wouldn't say apple is as bad as microsoft, not yet anyway, but lots of stuff points out that Apple is working towards locking in their users. For example, the fiasco about security updates to the older versions of OSX a few days ago.
I always hear people chastising Microsoft about their evil DRM-enhanced future. I don't see why people don't notice Apple doing it RIGHT NOW. Look at iTunes. You can burn your music, or you can put it on your iPod. I have an Archos mp3 player. I can't put music I buy from iTunes on it even though I've purchased the music. I'm by no means putting down Apple's use of DRM, after all, they have to make money somehow, but it's important to realize that they are just another corporation, and in parallel, they are just out to make money.
With open source you don't have to rely on a central source for fixes, you can fix it yourself, you can modify the appliations to suit your needs and whatnot. MacOS X may look nice, but it's no develper's heaven. That's what linux is for.
When all freedom is outlawed only the outlaws have freedom