Slashdot Mirror
Linus Torvalds' Benevolent Dictatorship
treebeard77 writes "BusinessWeek has posted Linus Torvalds interview '
The creator of Linux says "I can't be nasty" when leading the open-source movement since it's all built on trust and teamwork' "
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Hail Linus
That's GNU/Dictatorship damn you.
...not a 'movement'. He wisely left that nonsense to the zealots.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
If you found this interview interesting, I would recommend his book (ghost-written, of course), Just for Fun. It's suprisingly light reading.
Theo isn't the most polite, but he certainly gets things done in an organized safe and secure manner
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
I think that not thinking about these things will eventually hinder Linux adoption, as it did in Munich's case.
So what's the long term plan? What kind of ideas are out there? I know there's a solution to be found!
Linus is just the maintainer of the general stable tree of the Linux kernel, he's not some kind of Linux czar.
There's a big difference between rule of an OS with an iron fist and maintainership of a kernel for an OS. Linus does a good job maintaining his project (the Linux kernel), so no one directly forks it.
Anyway, the article's a interview that ranges over his opinion on some patent issues.. not that you'd realize it from the post.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
from the article:
;)
"... That has helped Linux become the No. 2 operating system worldwide for server computers."
Dumb question, I know, but who exactly is number 1, and what constitutes a server, anyway?
Duh, #1 is "beowulf clusters" of Windows 98 machines being used to send spam
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
Wouldn't the world be great if we could have political leaders that were more like Linus. The problem is people like Linus don't win elections because they're not manipulative liars like all the rest of politics.
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
I'm not so much a leader, I'm more of a shepherd. Now all the kernel developers will read that and say, "He's comparing us to sheep." It's more like herding cats.
So I'm a pussy instead?
ever actually READ an EULA on a piece of commercial software? its a lot of really complicated legal text saying just that; they're not responsible for anything the software does to your computer. the *microsoft* EULAs usually also say you're legally bound to keep your mouth shut about anything bad the software does to your computer. i'm not joking. read one sometime.
But MANY commercial programs aren't innovative, either. Microsoft Money is just a poor clone of Quicken, Norton AV does the same thing as McAfee, EZ CD Creator is a clone of Toast, etc. I don't think it's fair to compare the best, most innovative commercial software, with all of the thousands of mediocre open-source programs out there. Some of the best open-source programs are incredibly innovative: BitTorrent, Python, Subversion - and others, while they superficially act similar to popular commercial programs, have dozens of innovative features: Gimp, OpenOffice, Audacity
Linux was meant to be a Unix-like operating system for PCs. It presents a Unix-like interface because that makes it possible to easily port zillions of programs written for Unix operating systems. Internally, Linux was designed from scratch, and though it uses the basic Unix model (for processes vs threads, file-based devices, etc.), it has very little in common with any other Unix in the way it actually does anything nontrivial. Want to talk about innovation? Linux scales down to little handheld devices with 8 MB of RAM, and all the way up to 1024-CPU supercomputers. All with the same kernel (and different compile-time options). No other operating system can claim to do that. Is that not innovation? (Windows CE is NOT the same kernel as Windows XP, and no version of Windows scales up to supercomputers nearly as well as Linux.)
Apart from the points raised by other people on this thread (especially the one about EULAs being disclaimers claiming no warranty), I think what Linus was talking about was innovations from a technological point of view in the kernel, which I think is a valid point. MS comes out with Brand New NTFS(tm) and Brand New ActiveThis(tm) and ActiveThat(tm) every couple of years, as the reasons why you should upgrade to the latest Windows. Linux doesn't - it doesn't even encourage you to upgrade. The point is, rather than putting in *altogether* new features, Linus tries to maintain existing features (the standard Posix stuff) as efficiently and fast as possible. As Linus claims in his article, programs written in 1992 can still be run on the latest kernel. The whole point is that innovation with the kernel is happening behind the scenes, not in the marketing world where MS and other large software companies work.
My two cents on application usage: I think most developers are scared, because they know that if they get One Humongously Big Idea, large software companies will immediately embrace and extend them out of existance. They literally have no-one to hide behind under the open source model.
With the pirates, though, mutiny was rare, even if the captain was an evil malevolant tyrant. No matter what he did, mutiny was worse. Mutiny is the worst crime you can commit on the high seas.
Word got out that you took part in a mutiny, no matter what an asshole Captain Blythe was, you'd never serve on a ship again in your life. Hell, you'd be lucky to pay for passage on one.
In fact, many of the Bounty mutineers wound up living out their lives on some pacific island, partly because noone would go and pick them up.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
President Bush called for an impromptu press conference today to inform the nation of a new threat in the War on Terror.
"I'd like to start by thanking the brave and strong Americans at home and abroad who have stood by our troops and supported our efforts in the War on Terror. Today I bring news of an even greater threat. Our intellegence shows that a New Dictator has gained power and established a large network of terrorist computer cells in homes and offices around the country. This New Dictator is Linus Torvolds and I can assure you he hates America, he hates Capitolism and he hates Freedom. Today we begin our war with another terrorist, a terrorist that is bent on destroying Corporate America and our way of life. Already he has duped many of our citizens and corporations to convert to "Linux" a terrorist organization no less dangerous than Al Qaeda or the brutal Dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. We must band together and stamp out this threat to our liberties and safety. Today I have appointed Steve Balmer as Special Consultant for the creation of the Desktop Security Agency which shall be a part of the Homeland Security Agency. Together with Tom Ridge and Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Balmer shall create a roadmap of shock and awe to root out and destroy this new threat before it is too late."
As long as i have TCP/IP over parrots, i'm fine. I wonder how many times you would have to say http://slashdot.org to a parrot before he can repeat it and pass the message on to the next parrot on the next island.
"Wrrrrokk! http://slashdot.org, pass it on. Tweet!"
"Software patents concern me. I worry about some greedy companies -- possibly failing ones, trying to make trouble and abusing the system. Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them.
We have random people in random countries working on random things, and they don't have 1,000 patent lawyers. So I'm not worried about one patent in particular, but the whole system. It's not a problem today. But it's a thing I can't control, unlike the technical side, where I can actually do something."
It is refreshing to hear Linus state what RMS has been saying for the past five years. Software patents are evil, evil, evil. Yet Linus seems to stir less controversy when he says these things. I think both of them have a great deal of admiration for each other and both of them do very important if parallel work.
For all the talk about the Hurd, RMS doesn't use the Hurd.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software