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."

Comments

Heroes

[Anonymous Coward]

If giving away Linux earned him a place as a hero, imagine what would happen if Bill released Windows for free!

Re:Heroes

[EllynGeek]

That would make him a terrorist, by magnifying the problem of windoze botnets, spams, phishes, malware of all kinds, fraud, and identity theft a hundred times worse. We wouldn't even be able to get on the Internet at all- all the world's bandwidth would be devoured by warring malware bots.

Re:Heroes

[Abreu]

Haha, this confirms that the difference between a Freedom Fighter and a Terrorist resides only on who gets to write the history books afterwards.

Re:Heroes

[s20451]

imagine what would happen if Bill released Windows for free!

He would be poor.

Re:Heroes

[MikeFM]

Giving native Americans blankets would have been a good thing. Giving them blankets that infect them with small pox was a bad thing. That's the difference between giving away Linux and giving away Windows.

However, I think major good would come out of a totally open Windows - patent and copyright free - if it was released because it'd let Linux code merge into Windows, Windows code merge into Linux, and of course code merging with other free software. If Microsoft could open all it's file formats and protocols and ask hardware developers to release full specs to their devices it'd be a huge thing that I think would earn Bill an equal status as a hero.

I think everyone that makes an effort to do things for the good of others, or especially for the good of the public at large, is a hero. Maybe a need to help others is just as selfish as any other need on some deep subconscience level but at least you leave the world a little bettr for having been there.

Re:Heroes

[smitingpurpleemu]

Ronald Reagan back in the 1980's called the Mujihadeen in Afghanistan (and by association Mullah Omar and Osama himself) freedom fighters for fighting against the USSR.... I'm sure that's what the poster was referring to. Those then-freedom fighters are now the terrorists that are fighting the Americans in Afghanistan.

Re:Heroes

[Stalyn]

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.

Re:Heroes

[hotdiggitydawg]

while both parties engage(d) in violence, only one of the two groups had (have) an interest in ending the battle and making the lives of themselves and others better.

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. ...and now that I can smell my karma burning anyway (like napalm in the morning), let me put my opinion on the table so the Trolls needn't starve - I hope the US wipes Al Qaeda off the face of the Earth. What they did in New York was inexcusable. I also hope that the Western forces get swiftly booted out of Iraq, causing the people of the Western countries to remove their respective governments, because their presence there is just as inexcusable, and is actually giving terrorists more incentive. The sooner someone knocks off all the warmongers on both sides, the better. But hey, I can say that because I voted for the other guy...

And

[Konster]

RMS screams out loud, "No, that is GNU/Hero, damn it!"

Re:And

[One Louder]

Yeah, I'd hate to be a chair in Richard Stallman's office right about now - assuming he actually uses a chair and doesn't just levitate.

Re:And

[ClamIAm]

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.

Reminds me of the movie "hero"

[Srin Tuar]

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.

Re:Reminds me of the movie "hero"

[eldacan]

The most common form of hero is the person that actually goes about to get the hard parts done
Like (co)developing a compiler (GCC), a debugger (GDB), a programer's editor (Emacs), which Stallman did. Not the most visible parts of a working system, but quite essential ones.

Now that he's a hero...

[One Louder]

I hope he saves the cheerleader.

What a crock of shit!

[RLiegh]

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.

Re:What a crock of shit!

[duh P3rf3ss3r]

No, I'm sorry but you are wrong. The GNU tools were useful and were used a great deal before the Linux kernel came along. Just look at how many of them shipped with the various flavours of BSD (several of which pre-date Linux, I might add.)

Yes, the Linux kernel filled a huge void on the road to a completely GPLed operating system. But it did not create the concept of a free OS nor did it create the concept of freedom. Those concepts pre-date Linux and were embodied in the GNU project.

I'm not trying to get into a RMS/Torvalds flamewar -- we've had too many of those. But I also don't accept revisionist history that says that GNU would be nothing without Linus's kernel. If you truly believe that, perhaps you can explain to me how the GPLed parts managed to exist for almost a decade before the kernel came along. Do you think that, once the kernel appeared, someone said "Oh, yeah, there was a bunch of mouldy stuff in the bottom of the drawer over there that was invented nearly a decade ago and we couldn't figure out what it was for -- let's try it here!"

RMS would a better choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, if you were to only pick one person from the whole Free/Open Software world, it would have to be Richard Stallman. I give him 'hero' status because he's the man who spelled out the four freedoms of software which are more important than the GPL(any version).

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
         
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
         
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
         
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  

What *kind* of hero is Linus?

[slightlyspacey]

From the dictionary definition of "hero"

hero
-noun
1. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child. .....

5. a large sandwich, usually consisting of a small loaf of bread or long roll cut in half lengthwise and containing a variety of ingredients, as meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes.

I vote for number 5 myself with mayo and mustard.

Who?

[delirium of disorder]

Linus has done a great amount to advance freedom, as has RMS. Their actions, however, were quite safe. They certainly are not in the same category as those who have risked their lives for human rights. However, the fact that a reactionary authoritarian like Thatcher is on the list totally discredits it. So, I guess Linus's inclusion is a non-event.

Re:Ok...lemme get this straigh

[spun]

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.

Re:How proud they must be

[qwijibo]

Anyone who can get a bunch of programmers to work together has patience beyond that of mere mortals.

Re:Not So Funny: Abuse of the Term, "Hero"

[fumblebruschi]

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.

Tea Parties

[jc42]

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.

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. ;-) It's further evidence that the war is partly about the economy.

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.