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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."
I think it's ironic that a normal guy who doesn't have millions in the bank (as far as I know of course, please prove me wrong if neccesary) is seen as more influental than those IBM and MS bigshots.
:)
Funny
This is the sig that says NI (again)
The point is that, as a single individual, he has astounding control over that one thing: Linux. And that one thing, Linux, has an astounding amount of influence in the world right now.
Linux is essential to IBM's current marketing strategy. That means Linus has influence on IBM's marketing and marketshare. Linux is MicroSoft's top threat. That mean's Linus is influential in the competing with one of the top companies in the world.
Cities and countries are talking about switching over to Linux (and I don't mean just open-source software in general). That mean's Linus is influential with many governments.
Novell has a lot riding on Linux. That mean's Linus is influential with the future of Novell. RedHat, Apache, MySQL, KDE, Mandrake, and many other organizations and communities have their intrests tightly tied with Linux's results. That means Linus is influential with those organizations.
Groups like Debian base some of their decisions on what does and does not go into Linus's kernel tree, which means Linus is influential with everyone who is a part of those groups.
Although his influence in any one place is small, Linus has a very large influence overall.