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Linus Torvalds Officially a Hero
CortoMaltese writes "The European edition of the Time magazine has selected Linus Torvalds as one of the heroes of the past 60 years. From the main article: 'In the 60 years that Time has been publishing an Atlantic edition, extraordinary people have emerged from the churn and turmoil, creativity and chaos of a period that witnessed the aftermath of world war, the toppling of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the vanquishing of apartheid in South Africa, the advance of women, the failure of old certainties and the rise of new fears. These people are our heroes, and in this special anniversary issue, we celebrate them and their many achievements.' The article on Linus is titled 'By giving away his software, the Finnish programmer earned a place in history.' Linus is cited in the 'Rebels & Leaders' category along with Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, and others."
Haha, this confirms that the difference between a Freedom Fighter and a Terrorist resides only on who gets to write the history books afterwards.
No sig for the moment.
You have a pretty faced popular guy who gets acclaimed as the hero, and a snarling rough-edged guy behind the
scenes who is the real hero.
Linus isnt a charlatan or a bad guy, he just doesnt want to change the world.
RMS isnt entirely grouchy, but its popular to credit him with being so.
Meh, maybe its not such a good analogy.
But the main point stands: Real "Heroes" are not always the popular/friendly/nice to look at types.
How proud Mandela, Walesa, and the others in this list of "Rebels and Leaders" must be to have been included in the august company of Linus Torvalds, a man known if for nothing else, for his unwavering commitment to the ideals underlying the successful proliferation of his operating system kernel.
Congratulations for that acheivement!
Ahem.... On a less sarcastic note, this is a recognition of the real leadership Linus has demonstrated in keeping the herd of kernel developers working together fairly efficiently. Congratulations, Linus.
Hero? Why? Because someone wrote a piece of software and decided to give it away instead of charging money for it? I guess that would make Microsoft's IE browser team heros back in the 90's. Cue the Linux fanboys please.
In the copyright sense, "Linus Torvalds giving away his software" is not an accurate description. What happened is that "Linus Torvalds retained the copyright on his software and published it under a licence". "Giving away software" is more akin to "putting software in the public domain".
Scroogle
Personally, I think the thing that sets Linus apart from others in the open source movement is that he has quite a bit of charisma for an engineer (I hesitate to say "free" because that often implies "cheap quality" in our day & age). Others, like our good friend RMS, contribute a huge amount as hackers and in other important respects but lack the some of the trickier diplomatic skills which are required to hold things together. I agree with RMS on almost every issue, but I think it's important to have a relatively moderate personality like Linus' in a position of such high visibility, to really humanize things for everyone. Some people may disagree, but that's what I feel on the matter.
That said, congrats Linus! You're certainly my hero, and I've been living the open-source dream for years now. Also to RMS, the FSF, and the rest of the GNU, Linux and open-source community. Hats off to you all; without your hard work and ideals, there would be no Linux!
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
Sorry, but all that Linus did was to get help on his pet project. The real people who advanced freedom and the cause of free software were the folks over at the GNU project and (at the time) the CSRG. Usually I agree with the people who roll their eyes when Stallman goes on about GNU/blah but this time I can see his point... Linus winning this award actually helps to bury them, and worse yet it detracts from the ideals of the GNU movement (and remember, in 1992 if there had been no GNU, there would have been no Linux; period).
Sorry, as far as impact and influence goes -like him or loathe him- Stallman has had more of an active, positive influence on the open source movement; Linus is merely a clever student who managed to wring the most homework help out of the internet...Stallman started the movement which eventually led to Sun opening up their crown jewels.
Unfortunately, in America, we equate tremendous wealth, beauty, fame with "goodness" and "heroism". When Mother Teresa died, no one cared. When Princess Diana, estranged wife of Prince Charles, died, we cried to the heavens for the passing of a good person. What is the difference? Though Mother Teresa promoted good ethics, she was financially poor and physically ugly. By contrast, Princess Diana was rich and physically beautiful.
[side note]
There is considerable irony in America, the so-called Christian nation. Though a slim majority of American consider themselves to be Christian and supposedly tout how ethical they are (Can you say, "torture in Abu Ghraib"?), they quickly ascribe the term "Hero" to people -- like Linus, Princess Diana, Mick Jagger, and Magic Johnson -- whose main "achievement" (i.e., accruing money, fame, or beauty) has nothing to do with ethics. 'Tis time to jettison the notion of "Christmas" and all the hypocrisy that goes with it.
Margaret Thatcher!? Wtf?
Oh, it's a US-owned publication. No wonder it's on the extreme right-wing.
"Hero? Why? Because someone wrote a piece of software and decided to give it away instead of charging money for it? I guess that would make Microsoft's IE browser team heros back in the 90's. Cue the Linux fanboys please"
The someone who wrote the browser was Spyglass and was based on code licensed from the NCSA. MS first tried to get an exclusive deal with NCSA then went to Netscape and finally Spyglass. The deal was for royaltees to be paid on every copy sold. MS then proceeded to 'give' it away. Spyglass then went broke.
was Hero, why?(Score:1, revisionism)
davecb5620@gmail.com
OK, I'm biting the scorchingly off-topic bait... Point of fact: Mother Theresa died within a week or so, if memory serves, after the death of Princess Di, for whom the world gloriously mourned, as you observed. And for the few hundred million or so of us who genuinely care about matters spiritual, the ugly woman who took care of lepers in Calcutta was indeed mourned silently -- but widely. Why? To find the answer to that, you'll need to look beyond your own nose... ; )
There is nothing wrong with doing things to make a profit. There is also nothing heroic about it. Torvalds is a hero because he did something for the greater good rather than persuing selfish ends. Doing something for the greater good with little thought towards personal profit is pretty much the definition of heroism.
Ballmer not only does everything for personal gain, he actively suppresses those who do things for the greater good, because they cut into his profits. That is what makes him a bad guy.
The difference between a hero and a villain is in the means, not the ends. In the end, there is no altruism, and everyone does everything for their own selfish reasons. Gates and Ballmer have actively harmed others for profit. Linus wrote a free operating system as a brag to the world: see how great I am, I can give the fruit of my labor away and still be a success. Both were selfish acts, but society benefits from one sort of selfish act without rewarding it, whereas the other sort of selfish act is rewarded with riches. So we should laud Linus and not Gates or Ballmer as a hero. Those two have already gotten their reward from society in the form of wealth, they shouldn't be called heros as well.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Bill put a desktop on every desk, in every home.
What about CowboyNeal?
Come on mods !
You may or may not agree about what parent says, but it raises a good point. I know this is Slashdot, but if you RTFA, you will see that this article is fully biased (even the author says that "I am proud to be a Thatcherite.").
Saying that Margeret Thatcher is a hero because she played a major role in the falldown of the former Soviet Union is as relevant as saying that G.W. Bush is a hero because he played a major rôle in the war against terrorism by invading Iraq. And refusing to compromise doesn't prove anything and is not always heroic. Sorry to invoke Godwin's law, but Hitler also didn't compromize with anybody, which doesn't make him a hero neither.
Anyways, there is no reason to compare Linus Torvals to neither Nelson Mandela nor Margaret Thatcher. One did computer stuff, another spent years in jail and the last ruled a country with an iron fist. Apples and oranges anyone ?
This is sad. They award people like him, compared to people volunteering in central Africa risking their lives for refugees. People like those deserve such awards. Nelson Mandela, Gorbachev, Thatcher are very prestigious people. With Linus on the list, he really didn't contribute to anything except for corporations having a "free" option. Linux does not feed people in Africa and other poor nations, no sirey. His presence on that list dilutes the other recipients prestige.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Actually, this is more on point than you might think. From the article:
Torvalds has achieved fame as the godfather of the open-source movement, in which software code is shared and developed in a collaborative effort rather than being kept locked up by a single owner.
The title of "godfather" probably more accurately describes someone like RMS or Theo de Raadt, who are both very, uh, ideological with their software. Linus, on the other hand, is simply the chief hacker on a very important piece of software in the Free/Open ecosystem. He himself even says that he's more a coder than any kind of revolutionary.
Personally, I think it's a bad idea to focus too much on any one person, as no one can really claim to be the most important. Sure, the kernel is maybe seen as "most important" in some ways, but we shouldn't forget the hundreds of other critical pieces of software that people use every day. And even within a project, there is often a core group of people who defer to one head. For example, the core kernel team: people like Alan Cox, Andrew Morton, Ted T'so, and on and on.
Then there are people who pushed free software/open source forward in other ways. People like Michael Tiemann, who pioneered the business model of selling support and development services for the GNU toolchain. Or the folks inside Netscape (including Jim Barksdale) who pushed for the release of their code.
I guess my point is that "journalists" should really try to not oversimplify things, and to get the facts right besides.
Probably knighted or something. No, wait: that's been done.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
As one of the slim majority of Americans who considers himself ethical and didn't have anything to do with Abu Ghraib I don't think your post is actually very insightful.
Of course you did not have anything to do with Abu Ghraib. But why is there no public outcry about the terrible things that are happening in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? Why aren't more Americans angry about this? The Democrats won the midterm elections because of the war in Iraq. But it was not because of the 100,000 civilian deaths. It was not because of the atrocities and the torture. It wasn't even because of the fact that the war in Iraq has made America unsafer. It was because of the 2,800 Americans that have died in the conflict.
I can understand how families are angry that their sons, brothers and fathers will not come back. They have every right to be. But why weren't more Americans angry that president Bush practically legalised torture? The American soldiers fighting in Iraq went there to fight for the freedom of the Iraqi people. I'd say that the atrocities in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are an insult to the memories to those who gave their lives
Yes, you had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. But sometimes not having to do anything with something is not enough. After all, Edmund Burke was right when he said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"
(and I'm falling for it)
... so does the rest of us. Including people in less developed countries, who is now less dependent of those corporations.
Corporations have a free option
Linux is a single but important brick in a a world-wide free computer infrastructure, which has the potential of bringing more freedom and prosperity than any revolution in a single country.
Osama would be happy to see that you've swallowed the Islamo-Facist-Propoganda hook, line, and sinker. Most people understand that a freedom fighter, well, fights for freedom for themselves and others. Most people understand that freedom fighters don't fly planes into buildings, they don't behead those who don't share their ideology, and don't shun the diplomatic processes that could actually lead to freedom. See, most people understand that there is a huge difference between someone fighting for freedom and someone who calls themselves a freedom fighter to win the support of the mentally weak and susceptible.
I guess the term "most people" doesn't include the parent or the moderators that promoted this dribble to +5 insightful.
No, he would be sued, by SCO. For what? SCO wouldn't know, but Gates would. SCO: You know what you've done!
How sad and pathetic is it that the creator of an OS is labled a hero. Linux is good, probably even great, but that doesn't make Linus a hero and diminishes the real heros in the world.
Princess Diana, OTOH, was vocal about her chosen cause -- removal of mines in warfare and helping the non-military victims of them -- and raised millions for it
It's worth pointing out that Diana's cause was "chosen" for her by her employers, the British government. Her charity work was a clearly-defined part of her job description, which she accepted as part of her marriage agreement (it was, you'll recall, a political marraige arranged by the monarchy.) When she and the Prince of Wales were divorced, her employment with the British government also ended, and she stopped doing charity work and settled into the comfortable everyday life of European aristocracy. That doesn't make her a bad person in any way, but I still wouldn't compare her to Mother Teresa, who was genuinely ascetic and devoted, whether the allegations you mention are true or not.
So, under your definition, George Washington and the American revolutionary army could not qualify as freedom fighters since they did not rely solely on diplomatic measures and took up arms, right? Yet, no one can deny that they were fighting for the freedom of themselves and others. I personally don't think they were terrorists, but I can see how the Brits might have seen them that way...
Is that the point you were trying to make? I think your chosen distinction between the two concepts puts the Taliban and the American revolutionary army in the same boat, and I don't think that's necessarily fair to the Americans.
Delay is preferable to error. (Thomas Jefferson)
He may have somewhat worked hard, and he definitely built a business. But he never released a superior product, and his prices have never been reasonable. All MS/Gates/et al have ever been good at is marketing.
It's quite possible to build a large profitable business without using the despicable tactics used by MS.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
See, most people understand that there is a huge difference between someone fighting for freedom and someone who calls themselves a freedom fighter to win the support of the mentally weak and susceptible.
Are you sure? Most people reelected Bush.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You guessed right. The way you make billions must count for something, too.
I don't want to defend Osama bin Laden but he did issue a fatwa in 1998 listing all his grievances. Plus he has offered a truce several times. I think though you are missing the larger point. History is not a science in which you can determine who is ultimately right and wrong. The people who survive and create the power structures thereafter are those who write the histories and those histories reflect their biases.
Surely if we Americans had lost the Revolutionary War, George Washington would have been looked upon as a traitor and a rebel. He would have been hanged and the fickle masses would have cheered it.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
You don't really believe that missiles were in Turkey or Cuba for the benefit of either of those two nations do you? They were there simply to allow a ballistic missile to hit the capital of the other power before they had a chance to react, not for any intrinsic protection of the host nation. Also, neither country was put into danger from withdrawals.
Also, did anyone really think too much about what the Mujahideen stood for in the '80s apart from getting the Soviets out of Afghanistan? Someone must have known what they were about, since their name literally means "dudes on a jihad". Most of the west got their information from either Regan or Rambo 3, you know when Rambo is fighting Russian tanks and helicopters on horseback and when they are all blown up it ends with a dedication to them. People just thought of them as patriots trying to get an invading force out of their country rather than religious nuts.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Rubbish. Both sides always want the war to be over, but only as a victory for themselves. The only people who want war to continue is the few who stand to gain from it continuing. I'm sure Muslim extremists think all our lives would be better under a global Islamic caliphate. Personally I disagree, strongly, but I'm not that one-eyed that I can't begin see where they're coming from. They've lost countless numbers of people simply by being at the wrong end of Western (read: US) foreign policy. No doubt there's a bit of tall poppy syndrome there too, but in their eyes the oppressive regime they are fighting against is the West. I'm sure they consider that their actions and principles are righteous and Western ones are evil. You can bet that, if they won next week, the history books 50 years from now would portray suicide bombers as heroes, Western forces in Iraq would be invaders instead of liberators, and Bush would be compared unfavourably with Hitler. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist - it all depends on your point of view.
This is because genetics works on the level of species, not individuals, and for the species, fairness and reciprocity are more successful strategies than competition. We have to compete with every other species in nature, what sense is there in competing amongst ourselves for survival?
You aren't quite correct. Yes, it is evolutionarily better for organisms to cooperate, sometimes even at the detriment of the survival of an individual, than it is for everyone to compete to the death, but genetics does not work on the level of the species (or the "group" or the individual). Genetics works at the level of the gene, and this manifests itself in the behavior of the larger categories. An individual organism will tend to help others to the degree that they are genetically related to them (parents help their offspring a great deal, herds are basically a cooperative extended family, members of the same species are less likely to hunt each other than to hunt other species, and symbiosis can even develop across different clades). "fairness and reciprocity" are important behaviors, but in situations that reduce to the prisoner's dilemma, there is a strong incentive for an individual to cheat: to receive the benefit of a altruistic peer, but to not reciprocate. In these situations, the "sucker" organism tends to punish the cheat if they discover it's cheating, at the very least by not helping it in the future, or at most by harming it. Moreover, when it comes down to a choice between the survival of one individual and it's genes or the survival of several distantly related others of the same species--a zero sum game type situation like predators starving due to lack of prey and resorting to cannibalism, evolution will never favor an individual that sacrifices itself "for the good of the species". Please read Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene to learn more about situations where evolution must favor competition. If you are looking for situations where genetic survival is favored by cooperation, I recommend Sociobiology or other works by E.O. Wilson.
People will naturally both compete and cooperate in different situations. I do agree that our society has been shaped by the economic elite to destructively stifle cooperation and encourage competition. I don't know of any corporate leader that deserves to not be called a villain, much less a hero.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
If only life was that simple. Often there are many motives behind insurgents (desire for freedom, power, revenge, etc). We use the word 'freedom fighter' as a euphamism to describe an insurgent with good motives and 'terrorist' as a dyphamism for an insurgent with bad motives. For example, take the rebels in Chechnya a few years ago. They were fighting for the 'liberation' of Chechnya and caused a lot of collateral damage. The Russians swore that they were terrorists, but the US called them freedom fighters.
"Osama would be happy to see that you've swallowed the Islamo-Facist-Propoganda hook, line, and sinker."
As you've swallowed the the GOP rhetoric I assume. What the hell is an Islamo-Fascist? The term doesn't even make sense! Please show how radical fundamentalists blowing up infrastructure, businesses, and people even remotely resemble fascisim.
"Most people understand that a freedom fighter, well, fights for freedom for themselves and others."
Yeah....and....
"Most people understand that freedom fighters don't fly planes into buildings..."
In WW2, the Japanese happily gave their lives for their cause. That meant becoming human torpedoes and flying planes into anything that even remotely looked American. If they were closer to us, you could damn well have bet on them strapping explosives to their planes and dive bombing into our cities.
In fact, if the US wasn't seperated from the rest of the planet by two oceans, we may have gotten a good taste of what total war actually was like. How many our heroes sacrificed themselves by doing actions that under any other circumstances would be consider insane, if not deplorable?
One could argue, for example, that "most people understand that freedom fighters don't drop nukes on cities". Well guess what, we did. Twice. How many civilians died as a result?
The typical argument I hear in return was, "Well that's different". No it isn't. We did it because we believed we were fighting for our freedom. We did it because we felt threatened. We did it because it was better than the alternative (a land invasion).
Who are you to judge someone else's beliefs. How do you know that those that flew into the Trade center felt any less strongly about what they believed in than you did after the trade centers fell?
Was it right? Hell no. Not by any stretch. But neither was our invasion of Iraq, where far more have died.
Beliefs in the hands of humans can be very dangerous things.
"...they don't behead those who don't share their ideology"
Counterpoint, the French Revolution. A lot of heads rolled in that one.
"...don't shun the diplomatic processes that could actually lead to freedom"
Uh, yeah they do. They usually do it when diplomatic methods either fail or yield poor results, usually due to the fact that the opposing entity is much more powerful than you. See American Revolution.
The other way diplomatic channels fails is if you aren't given one. That seems to happen more often than it should.
"See, most people understand that there is a huge difference between someone fighting for freedom and someone who calls themselves a freedom fighter to win the support of the mentally weak and susceptible."
Please. Osama and clan used the same tactics against the Soviet Union, with our aid. We called them freedom fighters at the time.
People wouldn't follow if they didn't think there were some merits to what Osama et al are preaching. This goes back to the whole "winning the hearts and minds" of the people, which so far we've done an absolutely miserable job. We aren't viewed as friends, we are viewed as occupiers. People are miserable, angry, and afraid. When people get to that state, they rally around someone who is a kindred, shows strength, and leadership. Sort of like how the nation rallied around GW back when the trade towers fell.
But let's change the situation. Let's say the tables were reversed, and somehow the Iraqis invaded our country and took it over. Let's say they used the same pretenses we did, were just "as careful" to avoid civilian casualties. Let's say a guided missle blew up your house, and several of your close firends and relatives were inside at the time.
Now take those fellings and add them to the fact that some foriegn force has invaded your homeland. Tell me you wouldn't want to inflict as much harm on the enemy as you possibly could.
Perspectives and beliefs. Both easily understood, both just as easily misguided. Once enough
~X~
While it's silly to compare the Boston Tea Party to the World Trade Center attack, I've read a number of comparisons between the Boston Tea Party and the Iraq war.
;-) It's further evidence that the war is partly about the economy.
The Boston Tea Party happpened in response to the UK government giving exclusive licenses to a few companies to trade with the colonies. This effectively locked out businesses in the colonies from engaging in foreign trade. The Boston Tea Party was to send a message like "We won't buy from your companies; we want to run our own companies that hire our people as workers."
It turns out there's a direct parallel to this in Iraq. The US government has spent a lot of money of "reconstruction", but has refused to hire local contractors who know local conditions and could do the job cheaply with local labor. Rather, the money has gone mostly to big American corporations. Part of the intent of Bush's crowd was to bankrupt the local companies, so that American corporations could buy them cheaply, and Americans would then own much of the Iraqi economy.
But it has't worked that way. The Iraqis understand quite well what's being done to their economy, and when a company has to lay people off due to lack of business, a significant number of the workers have gone into the resistance. They understand, as did the American revolutionaries, that if their local economy ends up owned and operated by remote corporations, the result will be permanent poverty and servitude. They are primarily fighting a war for their own economic independence.
American politicians see what they're doing as a "war on terror", but much of the Middle East sees it as an attempted takeover of the Iraqi economy by powerful foreign corporations. This is very much like the story of the Boston Tea Party.
Just last week, Bush made a comment in a speech that has been ignored by the American media, but widely noticed in the Middle East. He explained that the US has to control the Iraqi oil fields, because otherwise the "terrorists" will end up in control, and they'll be able to affect the US's oil supply. Actually, this remark was noticed in a lot of the world. For example, it might be a tipoff that the US will occupy the Venezuelan oil fields in the near future. (And maybe the North Sea fields after that.
In both of these historic wars, the actual story is a lot more complex than the grade-school "us against evil them" categorization that you hear in so much politica rhetoric. Political and social independence is part of it, but people have often fought for economic independence, too.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
When se went embracing people with AIDS for example, she did so during a time of great ignorance about the disease.
Nobody is perfect, but to try to micro criticize people no matter what is frankly unfair and in some cases dishonest.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.