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Linus' Other Gift to the World
Glyn Moody writes "Linus is widely recognised for initiating two major developments: Linux and Git (it's an interesting discussion which of the two in the long term will be regarded as more important). But there's a third, which people tend to overlook: he also pioneered the key ideas behind what later came to be called open innovation. As more and more companies open up to embrace customer-generated ideas, and the idea spreads to other areas like open government, perhaps it's time to add open innovation to the list of Linus' achievements."
I think in the long run people will have forgotten both Linux and git, but the open enterprise system will go on.
In the future when we will have abundant robotic power, corporations will have to be managed differently. People with managing ability today are people who are good at manipulating people, with automated systems managers must be people who are good at manipulating machines, i.e. programmers.
The catch is that programmers aren't very good at manipulating people, and that include their peers. In a typical enterprise today a lot of effort is put into negotiating between the different departments and divisions. I cannot imagine a company managed by programmers doing that.
The Linux management system will work when managers no longer have people beneath them.
I thought innovation was what the Big Corporations did after the patent's ran out.
Take the case of the X-Y-Box (the first mouse) it was patented in the 60's. and low and behold on the 80's we got GUI's with mice. makes one think. Is this kind innovation setting us back 20 or 30 years.
use Open::Innovation;
Linus' major achievement was popularizing and demonstrating open source and the projects it could accomplish, and Linux and Git were merely demonstrations of that. Glyn merely has caught up to us who have realized sometimes great inventors great invent things, but in software great inventors truly only invent great ideas. That is what Linus has done here. Stop thinking of Linux as a thing and start thinking of it as an idea, part of a greater idea which he has touted for a very very long time.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Linus Torvalds has done well with Linux and now Git, but I don't really seeing him deserving the title of pioneer of "open innovation". At least not in the way the author is using the word "pioneer". Linux being the most popular open source project makes the project itself the catalyst for this so called "open innovation". There is a difference between taking advantage of open source methodologies and creating methodologies. The author has seems to lost the grasp of that difference in his zeal for idol worship.
I think RMS deserves the title of the creator (or pioneer) of "open innovation", and that says a lot since I don't always agree with his philosophy. RMS is the one that really stuck his neck out and preached the gospel. Even today he is either loved or hated by the software community.
Then there are all the advocates that came and went during the lifespan of Linux. They wrote manuscripts, sold the idea to their employer, or invested their own money in open source development. During all this time Linus focused on his vision of the kernel, and having a take it or leave it attitude towards advocacy. His main concern was making a quality kernel and rightly so.
If we used the word pioneer correctly then we would consider Linus one of many pioneers in this open source crusade. There are a lot of them with the scars from all the arrows in their backs. Sorry for the slight negative tone, but the idol worship in that article irritated me this early in the morning. More coffee!
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Can someone explain, or point to a discussion, of how it is argued that Git could be more important in the long term than Linux? Isn't Git small fish compared to Linux?
I think the better comment is "DCVS is super amazing!!"
Many people forget that there ware 2 other decent implementations of distributed source control out there (Mercurial and Bazaar), both of which function rather closely to Git. Though, from what I've seen, Git is currently the fastest and most efficient when it comes to processing various commands, but they all do everything rather quickly.
Git I would say is popular in the open source world for 2 reasons: Linus uses it and Github. My gripes still stand with it requiring Cygwin on Windows and its weird terminology (which is backwards from many of its predecessors). It's a great tool and I'm happy that its pushing people away from CVS and SVN, but it's not perfect and it's not the only DVCS on the block.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Linux wanted have his own UNIX-like computor. Buying a VAX to run Berkeley Software Distribution was at that time not afforable for a mere student and you also had to have an AT&T license for them.
The 386 BSD was released after Linux was started; Linux was started in '91 and BSD 386 came out '92.
Also you had the large lawsuit regarding BSD in '92 which slowed the development for BSD versions for 2 years.
Since then BSD systems more or less has been playing catch up with the more capable Linux system.
Had the BSD for 386 been released earlier and has not the big lawsuit stopped the distribution of BSD for 2 years
that Linux would probably not been much more then a hobby project that become abandoned when something
better came along. But instead Linux become the #1 UNIX-like operating system of choice.
Just saying it like it are.
Considering it's IBM's 100th birthday, it should be pointed out that a lot of the concepts TFA talks about were being done by groups like SHARE long before Linus was even born.
Maybe everyone will be happy when we just start calling it GNU/FOSS.