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Torvalds Dubbed Most Influential Executive of 2004
quamaretto writes "CRN has named Linus Torvalds the most influential executive of 2004, in the magazine's feature list of the top 25 executives of the year. For perspective, he is followed by Sam Palmisano of IBM and Steve Balmer of Microsoft. The coverage of Torvalds is 5 pages, including pictures, a written article, and a lot of interview material. Topics are business centric, including SCO, OSDL, and Torvald's personality in development and management."
an executive? What company is he in charge of these days?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Given Linux's penetration of business-level computing, and its influential role on software development as a whole, this is not really as surprising to hear as some might think. Still, it is excellent to see someone recognize this.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
It seems rather odd that Steve Jobs isn't on that list, considering how much the stock price of Apple has gone up this year. The iPod is big news, and the company seems to be coming back into relevance in the Scientific, educational and home desktop markets. Instead, Michael Dell is on there, and all he's done is put a lot of machines together and put out a copy-cat MP3 player. (He's done a good job at it and made a lot of money, don't get me wrong. He's no innovator, though.)
He may be a great person, a great kernel programmer, a great executive, but influencial??? He influences what gets into the Linux Kernel and what doesn't. He doesn't set trends. He doesn't guide where the industry is going.
Applications do that, not the kernel. Firefox has an influence. Sure Firefox is Open Source, but Linux has nothing to do with that. Features in desktop environments such as KDE and Gnome can be influencial, an Operating System as a whole can be influencial - but Linux - who deals only with the Kernel. I just don't see it.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how is Linus Torvalds influencing the industry? What executive decisions has he made that made that changed everything?
Is he really the most influential executive? It is not a list of the 'best' executives or the most popular executives. It is a list of the most influential executives.
On most days, he toils before a glowing terminal, playing his keyboard like a baby grand, not much different from his early days conceiving the kernel in Helsinki back in 1991. But now Torvalds orchestrates thousands of Linux developers distributed around the globe, synthesizing and arranging the bits into the masterpiece that disrupted the software establishment, crippling Sun, reviving IBM and giving Microsoft a taste of mortality.
Certianly a great number of supporting applications helped, but I wonder where the OSS movement would be today with the Linux kernel.
its about making linux (a kernal) enterprise ready and as a side effect causing real competition to happen again in the market place.
Or in other words, causing the others on the list to alter their ways..... hence most influencial...
and the other side of that coin..
Do the others on the list influence Linus and what he does?
probably not or very little...
Yeah and no Steve Jobs? That guy has the music industry in the palm of his hand.
The author goes to pains to find the good in Ballmer. Keywords are man of 'action' and 'energy', and these two words are repeated, with the failure of discovery of another virtue.
Key point is Ballmer's interest in 'innovation'. Goes in line with Microsoft's PR, sounds like there was no research on this man, just interview someone at Microsoft about its CEO.. they'll just repeat the company bottom line.
When I hear 'energy', for some reason reminds me of 'developers, developers, developers'. Makes me proud of Linus' laziness.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
What influence did Jesus of Nazarath have? He didn't create the Catholic Church. He founded no church. On his own, Christ would not have become the religious success that he is except for the Catholics, the Protestants, etc. If someone doesn't like what he said, they create their own brand of righteousness. So what influence does Jesus have. He's said that sin is wrong, but that hasn't stopped anyone, so where is this influence?
Don't get me wrong, I have respect for what he's done and that he's been able to do it, its far more then I can ever see myself being able to do and he deserves every praise for that, but most influential? That's really streching it.
What people think is very rarely the truth.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Within this frame of reference, a company is the residual of the past software development paradigm and the organization is a step in a new software development paradigm.
That Torvalds duties differ by miles from that of Ballmer and Gates is a sign of genius - Linus can manage an open source development organization without the traditional management hierarchy that is managed by Ballmer/Gates and all the rest of 'em.
So, to paraphrase what you've wrote: the influence Linux has on dictating Microsoft's corporate strategy isn't influential enough for you?
If you affect something's behaviour, you're having an influence on it.
In fact I would think IBM is more of a concern than linux persee.
Oh, not true, I promise you. Remember when IBM was going it alone with OS/2? It was a joke, despite the product having some very significant technical strengths. Linux is important because millions of people, tens of thousands of businesses, and scores of governments think it's important.
Add in the fact that Linux undercuts Microsoft on price, the fact that it (along with the freely implementable IETF and W3C internet and web standards) frees people from Microsoft's network effects monopoly prison, and the fact that people get to choose how their own computers work without paying Microsoft for the lesser privilege of serfdom, and you've got a social movement to seriously rival Microsoft's commercial dominance.
Don't ever kid yourself that IBM is making Linux. Linux is the leverage that IBM needs to remain relevant against the terrible power of a network effects driven monopolist like Microsoft. And it's not just IBM.. all of the PC manufacturers here and abroad benefit from Linux interrupting Microsoft's pattern of claiming all profits in the PC world to itself.
In materials that leaked out of Microsoft during the federal cases against it, Microsoft strategists explained that their greatest worry was that a Compaq or an HP might simply decide to spend an amount equivalent to the hundreds of millions of dollars that Microsoft charged them per year and put it towards the development of a free alternative commodity OS in free conjunction with the other industry players, freezing out Microsoft and taking back the industry's profits.
IBM alone couldn't do this. Compaq or Dell alone certainly couldn't do this. What was required to make that happen was a commodity operating system that would not threaten any hardware vendor in the way that OS/2 did IBM's competitors, and which everyone could trust to be equally accessible to them all.
Linus did that, because of his programming skill, because of his use of Richard Stallman's GPL, and because of his management and social skills.
Linus and his followers have overturned a many hundred billion dollar industry, and he deserves as much recognition as can be given to him for that.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Paraphrasing (?) an spanish poet called Joaquin Sabina:
Bill Gates is so poor that the only thing he has is money....
Linus may not be a rich man, but what he has (the respect, love and admiration of the computer world) is of much more importance than the billions that Gates has and the trillions he may have in the future....
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
He has, by the example of his competent leadership, demonstrated that important business software can be developed under a free software license.
This has influenced the industry so that 1) it is much more likely to rely on free software (Linux and other), and 2) it is much more likely comtribute to, and to release software of its own under a free software license.
Depends whether you're costing the time necessary to fix silly hardware incompatibilities (that don't occur if you buy 100% Apple gear) or spyware/virus issues. This, of course, will be proportional to the skill of the user or their friends or children. ;-)
Right now, for any non-technical user who just wants a computing appliance, doesn't have technical skills or help available, and is in the market for a new machine, I'd recommend a Mac.
And I'm a PC-using Linux type, and have been since 1995. Works for me, but maybe not for everyone.
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