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Torvalds on Linux and Microsoft
Sniper223 writes with a link to an interview on the Network World site with Linus Torvalds. Linus goes through the usual spiel about stuff like why he released the Linux OS in the first place, and how the future is open source. He also has some interesting commentary on the Microsoft/Novell deal: "I actually thought that whole discussion was interesting, not because of any Novell versus MS issues at all, but because all the people talking about them so clearly showed their own biases. The actual partnership itself seemed pretty much a nonissue to me, and not nearly as interesting as the reaction it got from people, and how it was reported ... I don't actually personally think the Novell-MS agreement kind of thing matters all that much in the end, but it's interesting to see the signs that the sides are at least talking to each other. I don't know what the end result will be, but I think it would be healthier for everybody if there wasn't the kind of rabid hatred on both sides. Some people get a bit too excited about MS, I think. I don't think they are that interesting." An interesting contrast to our earlier conversation.
That is what a discussion is. A bunch of people giving their opinions, or "biases" as Linus calls them.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Some people get a bit too excited about MS, I think. I don't think they are that interesting.
"When Microsoft writes an application for Linux, I've Won." - Linus Torvalds
Richard, is that you?
There's a lot in common with Microsoft's upper management and the Scientology crowd. Both are very focused in what they do (mass walletectomies), and both are utterly ruthless when it comes to extinguishing opposition.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The one thing he's known for, the Linux kernel, isn't something I particularly like (BSD--more liberal license, Windows--better desktop, Linux? I only use it because of work); but I tend to agree with him on a lot of things. That he would downplay the controversy, and point out that it only illustrates bias doesn't surprise me. He seems to have a gift for cooling things down, for steering clear of immature games and sticking to a clear analysis of the situation.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
To be fair though, Linux (the kernel) is what started it all: without the kernel, the GNU tools would hardly be as advanced as they are today, because the Linux attracted so many people. Without the GNU tools, well there would be other programs to replace them. There are a LOT more people who can write a userland tool than a kernel. That's why Linus gets a lot of credit, because there are few other people who could have done what he did.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
you like Linus, he is right that the hate for hate's sake between some (and I stress some) Linux and MS users helps nothing. Beyond that, as he is the creator of the kernel, I see him as a parent watching his kid grow up to be something he didn't envision or desire for it. He needs to learn to let go, Linux now belongs to the community.
[Linus has a gift for] steering clear of immature games and sticking to a clear analysis of the situation.
Linus's analyses are usually clear, indeed, but almost always short-sighted. He doesn't seem to notice anything beyond the end of his nose, and so doesn't recognize the potential for bad things to happen as a result of people being bad.
It was so with BitKeeper. It was so with TiVO. It is so with Microsoft.
Linus treats everyone as if they were fair, generous, and cooperative. Unfortunately the real world is not like that. It's full of deceitful, self-serving, and non-cooperative people and companies who talk nice but do evil.
If all of FOSS and not just the Linux kernel were in Linus's hands, we'd be in trouble. Fortunately almost nobody else in the community is that naive.
Linus's genius is in design and coding (and in herding cats). It most definitely is not in foresight.
Let's see them for what they are: Organised crime. One day justice will be done, Muslims will be obliterated and the world will be a better place for it.
Let's see them for what they are: Organized crime. One day justice will be done, America will be obliterated and the world will be a better place for it.
Let's see them for what they are: Organized crime. One day justice will be done, Jews will be obliterated and the world will be a better place for it.
Let's see them for what they are: Organized crime. One day justice will be done, Gays will be obliterated and the world will be a better place for it.
Let's see them for what they are: Organized crime. One day justice will be done, Blacks will be obliterated and the world will be a better place for it.
Extremism serves no one. And yes I do realize the discussion of Linux and Microsoft is not comparable to the examples above, but you sound no less ridiculous.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
No, if you read the stuff he says, it's clear that he does get it, he just disagrees.
He doesn't think people should have some god-given right to roll their own kernels on Tivos, for example, and he doesn't want to be the one to dictate that right to the people producing the Tivos, either.
On the other hand, though, he's perfectly happy with other people building their own alternatives to Tivos, complete with custom Linux kernels, if that's what they want to do.
Really, though, I get the impression his focus is really on x86 servers, where the software freedom thing isn't remotely as complicated and doesn't extend past the kernel into the firmware.
In all honesty, I can't help but wonder if Linus would've been happier with the MIT license.
I've never met anyone that was excited about windows.
Talk to some directX nuts sometimes. They get pretty excited about it.
I saw people get excited about Vista.
I think they'd got bored and forgotten about it by the time it was actually released though.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
What, falsifying video evidence for court isn't illegal? Surely you jest.
Sam ty sig.
I won't comment on "stupid," but being "blind" is usually the folly of those who stick to philosophies. I don't think Torvalds was blind to the implications of vendor lock-in, rather he assessed it and accepted it. Just as you probably do when you fly on a Boeing or AirBus jet run by proprietary closed-source software, or any of innumerable other things you do in "civilized" life. You may believe that opening those sources would result in a better airplane, but you accept the risk differential and wait for your peanuts.
He just doesn't seem to get it.
Now, I don't know him from Adam, but maybe, to him, it just doesn't matter. I mean, what were his intentions? World domination? Or was it/is it just a fun hobby? If Linux was to be declared illegal tomorrow, he might just think, "Eh", and do something else. He appears quite capable of that. I can only assume he has a nice nest-egg built up. So would he suffer any great loss that he really cares about?
What?
Know the battles that need to be fought and disregard the rest. It's a good way to lose precious energy and resources if you fight against everything without knowing what you are really fighting for.
Arguably, as neat as Linux might have been at the time, it would *never* have picked up speed without a solid set of userland tools on top, so there would never have been a set of tools specifically written for it. Sure, people could've used a BSD toolchain rather than the GNU set, but ultimately the Linux kernel was always dependent on somebody else's userland to carve its space in IT.
You mean Linus isnt a rabid MS-hating fanboy? I feel so disillusioned.
In all seriousness though it is nice to hear someone who actually matters in the open source community coming out against fud that comes from his own 'side'. (as if open source was about taking sides) The zealots who spread fud on the pro-linux side get way too much publicity and really make everyone associated with them look foolish.
They broke monopoly laws. By your own definition, that makes them criminals. Calling them organized crime is entirely accurate. I personally think every exec of MS should have been barred from ever working for a public corporation the minute MS was found guilty. We treat white collar crimes far too lightly- if a person steals $100, they go to jail for years. Someone makes decisions that costs the country millions if not billions, and they get a slap on the wrist and a fine for their company. Its fucking ridiculous- every corporate crime should require jail time for the CEO.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
1. And it came to pass that the Prophet, Holiness and Peace be upon him, did rise up in the morning and despaired.
2. Behold, a vision I have had, he spoke.
3. God has shown me a terrible vision of heretics and wolves amongst the fold, those who deny his Holy Word the Third GPL.
4. And the Prophet went out unto the People of GNU and raise up his hand from the holiness of his loins, for he had been chatting, and said, I declare a holy fudwah upon the heretic Linus. From this point hence, he shall suffer the wrath of the /. masses.
5. And it came to pass that they rose up, worshiping his glory, and put on their AC guises and did post great numbers of words.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I think it's ironic that so many people defend microsoft's illegal practices and policies. It's funny how people can see things in shades of grey when associated with a big entity (government or corporation) but everything is black and white when it comes to individuals. Just because MS products are more popular and it may seem easier to use/support MS in some cases doesn't make it more justified. They are a giant corporation who can afford to "lose" some money to competition which is why it's more outrageous when they break the law. Why is their management punished so much less than someone who robs a bank or sells drugs out of desperation? That person who robbed the bank/sold drugs is always considered a criminal eventhough they almost always had way fewer options than a big entity does, eventhough in the long run the robbery/drugs affects way fewer people and the criminal has way fewer options. Why does the big entity get defended more? Is it because the big entity is less criminal or because more people think it's in their own best interest to defend them?
Microsoft is credited with breaking anti-trust law and this is not just one case...
The Rieser (sp?) file system creator is credited with what, besides the file system? Killing his wife?
I think it shows Linus's bias to dismiss the illegal activities of Microsoft and to hide it by saying it is the rest of us showing bias.
Linus is not the only one outside of Microsoft doing kernel work, there are plenty others. BSD flavors, BeOS, ReactOS, AROS, Dragonfly (kernel changed enough to not really be tagged with BSD flavoring), Minix, MacOSX, etc...
For those who want to credit Linus with the kernel being used by a lot of Free Software, the fact is that had Linus not done so then somebody else would have, perhaps even the Hurd would have had better development and focus. And not to forget that the same Free Software is being run on other systems with kernels created by others.
If there is anything to realize here it is that people moved away from Microsoft for any number of reasons, I have my own user frustration related reasons and have additional frustration with the industry as a whole. When something better comes along I will move to it, as will others too. It might just be DragonFly.
Oh no, here we go again..
"Linux just made the kernel; it's irritating when he gets credit for Linux"
"Yeah, but at least he made the Kernel -- Gates just made the Basic compiler"
"That's news to me - have you ever heard of this guy called Paul Allen?"
"Doesn't matter - personally I think the Linux kernel isn't all that - I use BSD"
"Screw Linus -- he was wrong about Bitkeeper and Tivo so he's wrong about MS & Novell"
"Yeah, well at least he's not a convicted monopolist"
"Yeah, until M$ stops treating me like a criminal I refuse to buy their software"
Also insert random quotes and mis-quotes such as:
"When Microsoft writes an application for Linux, I've Won." - Linus Torvalds
"640kb ought to be enough for everybody" - Bill Gates
That about cover it? Can we have a non-childish discussion now? If there's any other slime to be thrown, just reply to this post -- let's keep the forum clean for an actual discussion.
"Microsoft simply isn't interesting to me."
"I don't actually personally think the Novell-MS agreement kind of thing matters all that much in the end"
"Some people get a bit too excited about MS, I think. I don't think they are that interesting."
Why anyone thinks this means he's pro-MS beats the hell out of me.
That could be true, except that most GNU tools were written before the Linux kernel was even usable.
If it weren't for the GNU project, Linus ("the guy") wouldn't have released the kernel under the GPL (as he says, it could have ended being just another one of his pets projects).
BTW, Linus gets all the credit for the kernel too, but there's actually an army of people working on it. Linus is no longer the irreplaceable hacker you seem to believe (if it ever was).
You don't win by sleeping with the enemy.
I disagree with Linus. I think the whole partnership is an extremely negative thing and falls into the same trap that Microsoft pursued through partnerships of the 80s and 90s. The end result was/is always bad for everyone but Microsoft.
In fact, I believe we should be significantly more hostile toward Microsoft because Microsoft is a convicted predatory monopolist that has claimed earlier this year that every user has to pay some dues to Microsoft and they also threatened to kill Open Source, with one of their representatives stating that 2007 was the year of the death of Open Source.
I think Linus is falling into a trap, by virtue of his relationship to many high end corporates, particularly those paying his bills. This is a tremendous influence on him and it is beginning to clearly show.
Microsoft is not the "necessary evil" of the computing industry. I fervently believe that the industry has been stifled in the long run because of what Microsoft has done in being predatory and killing off competition while being a monopoly. It used its power in a criminal way and has created a path down which we may never be able to recover. The hopes are that we can branch and have a 50-50 choice in software or even a 30-30-30. But being 90-10 is not the way to go for any industry. Only through competition with lots of car companies have we been able to produce some exceptional cars that are praised world-wide. Having only one software company essentially stifles all that.
The good thing is that in the short and long term IP will eventually begin to stifle Microsoft because clearly their employees can only produce so much IP each year. The rest of the industry is producing against them in a significantly greater amount, though, maybe not through IP filings but at least through prior art and obviousness. This means that either Microsoft will hit a wall on IP because there are millions of programmers world wide while there are only so many people at Microsoft capable of producing IP worthy of being patented. They also only have so many employees and only so many of those have the jobs doing the development and only so many of those have the skills to create new IP that can be patented. The rest of the world has vastly more people all capable of competing on the IP front.
The other thing that will kill some of their hopes is Vista. Recent, and past, denunciations of that OS have come down hard branding it world-wide as a product that is hostile toward the customer--an adversary of the customer. It can't long endure. The next piece is that DRM in some media is going out the door which was an important locking technology to lock you into Windows. The next bit are that Linux and OSX are growing considerably. This means that people are understanding that there is a choice.
The key to winning this is to educate the people about the fact that there are some solid and wonderful alternatives to Windows. The other thing is to educate them about the DRM, spying, manipulation, and generally bad faith in which Windows has been built to hide the fact that so much spying is going on on the user. Listen, your computer is an extension of your home. You would no more allow Walmart to put a hidden camera in your home to monitor to ensure you are not using stolen merchandise--and hence you should not be allowing Microsoft to install 47+ program on your computer to monitor your usage to determine if you are using stolen merchandise.
When people are educated and understand we all will have a much safer and more protected world free of the nasty privacy stealing immoral and unethical software being installed.
Be loath to accept SP3 for XP as I am sure it also has a slew of technologies to force you to give up XP and move to Vista or live with the same spying nastiness that Microsoft has incorporated into Vista. Be forewarned.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I am no fan of Stallman and I have some gripes with him about demanding only and all free software. But he clearly had created GNU before Linux (the kernel) was introduced and they were working in that direction. Clearly Linux (the kernel) was better than what they were working on and it was adopted by the industry, but let's not forget to give credit where credit is due. Stallman and his followers were the ones that created this whole thing and it would be unfair to put the credit in someone else's lap.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
It's basicly "I'm over here doing Linux, and I'll keep improving Linux regardless of whatever Microsoft does or doesn't do." That's not just in relation to MS, but seems to be the general case with tivoized kernels, DRM, patents and everything else that's not about improving the code. It's like an athlete saying he's competing against the clock and himself, constantly improving regardless of whether he's far behind or far ahead of the competition.
Usually, that's a very healthy attitude. And if everyone was running their own race, it would be. But Microsoft has proven time and time again that if they can't provide a superior product, they throw all kinds of dirt on the competition. He might not care if Linux is competition to Microsoft or not, but Microsoft certainly does. That's not to say he should start fighting FUD with FUD, but it'd be nice if he showed that he at least understands the game being played.
Microsoft can not kill Linux the kernel, because of the GPL. But there are many ways to kill Linux the market, and Microsoft is an expert at it. Again, I think Linus doesn't care all too much about that, or assume that if only Linux gets good enough the other "distractions" won't matter. Well, I care that Linux can be a mainstream OS that can handle mainstream media, interact with Windows networks and protocols, use common document formats and in general function like a first class citizen. If it's a stunning good kernel too, that's good but it's no good being exceptional at everything but the things I want to do.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The irony is it's your freedom at stake here with the GPLv3. RMS doesn't care much about credit. You're biting the hand that feeds you because it has a beard & is slightly overweight. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.
Hurd is the kernel, GNU is the userspace.
"I live in a good-sized house, with a nice yard, with deer occasionally showing up and eating the roses (my wife likes the roses more, I like the deer more, so we don't really mind). I've got three kids, and I know I can pay for their education. What more do I need?"
...What more do I need?
In a culture dominated by the words "I need more", this question looks erroneously out of place. Greed is so commonplace that to see such an authentic lack of it is refreshing.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
And why should he care? He's the originator and technical lead of a project, albeit one with his name firmly attached to it. He shouldn't care about anything Microsoft says or does, except maybe if/when they present evidence of 'his' kernel infringing on Microsoft's patents or copyright.
Linux vendors, on the other hand... they might have reason to care about the FUD.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Last time I checked, violating anti-trust laws is a criminal act. Last time I checked lying under oath is a criminal act. What's your definition of a "crime"?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think Linus is just happy doing what he's doing. He didn't seek fame (or infamy). But if his focus *really* was servers with absolutely no biases we'd have a stable api allowing proprietary vendors to develop closed drivers for Linux servers and then more or less forget about them.
I don't know what your relationship with Linux is but I work professionally as a server admin for a mid-sized company. Proprietary driver updates with each kernel release is a major pain in the ass and often requires you use older kernels while you wait for your vendor (EMC/Oracle/etc) to release an updated module.
I'm not making a political statement here one way or the other. But as the benevolent dictator this is something he could make happen if the server market was his only concern.
Quack, quack.
In martial arts one must keep ones mind clear and focused, free of hatred and emotion. Open source ideology is about embracing freedom, not hating Microsoft. Sure Microsoft are currently a barrier to freedom and by no means should we embrace them like long lost children just because they say something or act a little enlightened. But by the same token we should not shoot friends in the head just because the deviate from our ideology.
By letting an irrational hatred of Microsoft sour the relationship between Novell and the community we face a danger that the newly confirmed copyright ownership Novell has in Unix will be used by them the same way SCO did. Instead of finding a way to educate Novell we have taken a extreme and non productive approach which will tend to alienate not only Novell but any other companies considering working with the open source community.
The fact is that there are many companies out there which may make deals with Microsoft for their own reasons. We cannot expect companies to make a black and white decision about what "side" they are on. IBM for example is acting in its own self interest amd while that self interest is in the interests of the community all is well. But lets not deceive ourselves that they would fight for open source to the bitter end. They would settle. They would make a deal if it meant survival.
Novell may have been in a similar situation, and while I don't like these deals being done its a reality for companies in a way that it isn't for individuals. Microsoft won't sue you for personal use of a patent without a license, but they will sue Red Hat into the ground given the chance. Red Hat may yet need to make a deal if Linux does end up infringing, even if the Linux community can remove the infringement in quick order.
In truth Microsoft is USING our hatred against us. Already the Novell deal may have driven a wedge in the open source community between GPL 2 and GPL 3. Once again we see reactionary actions being driven by Microsoft to their advantage. Linus sees that hating Microsoft is no way forward. We need to examine, evalaute and develop strategies which allow us to define the ball game. Microsoft won when they turned the conversation to Total Cost of Ownership. They won when they got CEO's concerned about legal issues around Linux.
To win we must be more clever, less reactionary, and keep a clear head with a focus on what important; bringing open source to the world.
He made the kernel, at the very least you generally need the GNU tool chain to have something usable, plus a couple of other little things.
/dev, a few configuration files in /etc, and a Linux kernel." Notably, you need nothing from the GNU project, just the two binaries (Linux and busybox).
The term "GNU toolchain" usually refers to their compiler stack (gcc, as, make, autoconf, etc.) rather than their regular userland tools, aka coreutils (ls, cp, du, stty, su, etc.), or other stuff that are more than just "little things", like init and sh. I usually wouldn't nitpick, but you seem way too sure of what you're talking about.
And yes, I believe the original discussion centered on Linus's credentials as kernel author and made no claim that he wrote coreutils or anything else. Writing a functional coreutils isn't that amazing of an achievement, actually - take a look at BusyBox, a single binary that does all the useful coreutils plus (working imitations of) init, sh, insmod, ifconfig, dpkg, wget, etc., so that, "To create a working system, just add some device nodes in
I want to run Unix and when I ask for a command line I want zsh, be it Apple OS X, or Linux. Answer me this, Microsoft fan boys, why do I have to buy a computer with an O/S I will never use?
You seem to be confused. Microsoft don't sell laptops. Your complaint is with the PC hardware vendors that won't sell you a laptop without Windows.
Most people use userland libraries and don't interface directly with the kernel. glibc, GTK+, lib*, etc. GNU isn't "just" tar, grep, sed, etc (i.e. coreutils), it really does provide a large chunk of the system and I think anyone in a GNU dev's shoes would be a bit annoyed about the credit Linus gets. Also don't forget that Linux, and just about every FOSS app, is built using GCC.
To be honest I think it's just down to the naming, and not any misconceptions about importance or quibbles about the mission of free software. I've never heard anyone say GNU correctly in person (it's always G.N.U.), because it's such a terrible name and doesn't roll off the tongue like Linux. "Debian Sarge Guh-noo slash Linux", "Fedora Core Guh-noo slash Linux", "Damn Small Guh-noo slash Linux".
If they had put a few moments thought into the name, perhaps an acronym that describes what it is instead of what it isn't, and perhaps an acronym that can be pronounced. Off the top of my head perhaps Onix for open unix, or instead of the arbitrary 'G' in GNU they could have chosen a vowel; ANUs Not Unix, ENUs Not Unix, INUs Not Unix, ONUs Not Unix, UNUs Not Unix. "Freeax" was only marginally worse than "Guh-noo".
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Well, for an (Unix-like) operating systems there are two vital parts: the kernel and the C library (few programs communicate directly to the kernel; even language support libraries for other languages tend to go through the C library on Unix-like systems; also the C library is probably the one userspace component which is the most OS specific). The kernel on Linux systems is Linux. The C library is glibc, i.e. GNU. Thus it makes sense to call the system GNU/Linux.
... no, that's clearly to long. But then, Linux already has an x, so we can just make that uppercase to properly attribute the X part of it. Also, KDE has the history of simply adding a K to the beginning of everything it touches.
If it were for all the userland tools commonly used, I guess many current Linux installations would be more properly named KDE/X/Linux (although those running GNOME as desktop would be properly named GNU/X/Linux, since GNOME is GNU).
Ok, maybe make it KDE/X/GNU/Linux
Only problem: Should it now be KNU/LinuX, or GNU/KLinuX?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
What, me? Never.
You seem to be confused. Microsoft don't sell laptops. Your complaint is with the PC hardware vendors that won't sell you a laptop without Windows.
Are those the same PC hardware vendors which Microsoft has systematically browbeaten into offering Windows? The ones which (at least until recently) were almost to a man terrified of offering you something with any OS other than Windows lest some Terrible Beat of Redmond descent upon them?
Things are changing - Dell's recent foray into Linux systems demonstrates that - but to imagine that the Windows monopoly is entirely down to PC hardware vendors simultaneously, independently deciding to ship Windows and nothing else is pure folly.
You seem to be confused. I don't want Microsoft Windows.
I don't recall saying you did.
Most other people wouldn't either if they had any clue what they were buying.
Given how trivially simple it is to buy a computer without Windows, I'm afraid harsh reality blows your fantasy out of the water.
My mother (who is computer illiterate) used a Linux box for years to do her stuff on the internet.
Personally, I bought my mum an iMac. Sadly I was unlucky enough to do so only a month or two before Apple switched to x86.
The big lie you and all the other Microsoft fan boys are propagating is that Linux isn't ready for the desktop because no one uses it. If Linux distros were sold like Microsoft is sold, the world wouldn't end and Linux would have a similar market share.
I don't recall ever making those arguments either.
Linux was ready for the desktop in the last millennium. Plain and simple.
The market does not agree.
If people disliked Microsoft or Windows anywhere near as much as zealots like you thought they did, Apple would own the home PC market and Linux on the desktop would be csondiered even more of an oddity than it is now.
Well he said he made Linux, not GNU/Linux, so you should be happy...
You've obviously not seen any films about WW2. America did indeed win the war single handedly. They are famous for things like the victory in the Battle of Britain.
I guess I may be called a DirectX ntut for that, despite the fact that I spend most of my time coding on SDL+OpenGL, but hey, a risk I am willing to take :)
Credit is at best a secondary concern. The real issue here is the technical lead of this OS's kernel gets credit for the movement but doesn't care about your freedoms as much as you might wish. And you can't do anything about it except talk about the guy who's really been fighting for you all along. I find myself almost wishing for a Bitkeeper-like debacle this time involving the GPLv3.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Stallman and his followers (diciples?) have indeed contributed significantly, but claiming that they created the whole thing is probably stretching it a bit too far. Assuming that you by this whole thing refer to the various Linux distributions, then none of them would have gained any momentum if it wasn't for (ignoring Linus for a moment) Apache, Mozilla, PERL/PHP/Python/Ruby, the Eclipse Foundation, OpenOffice.org, ect.
I'm not trying to downplay the importance of the GNU toolchain, but personally I actually consider the GPL to be Stallman's most significant contribution.
I'm however not so sure that he still has any role to play in this story ...besides perhaps as the comic sidekick ;-)
The whole Linux thing was driven by choice and the freedom to choose, so GNU or Kernel or Open Source, it was all about individuals working together in what ever capacity they choose to achieve a wide range of shared goals.
In a manner of speaking every one involved was a sidekick to Tux, a symbol representing a shared ideal, and what ever that ideal was, it was left up to each and every individual own interpretation.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen