Slashdot Mirror
Linus Torvalds Says Linux Can Move On Without Him
pacopico writes: In a typically blunt interview, Linus Torvalds has said for the first time that if he were to die, Linux could safely continue on its own. Bloomberg has the report, which includes a video with Torvalds at his home office. Torvalds insists that people like Greg Kroah-Hartman have taken over huge parts of the day-to-day work maintaining Linux and that they've built up enough trust to be respected. This all comes as Torvalds has been irking more and more people with his aggressive attitude. The line between "blunt" and "aggressive" is one that you probably get to skirt a lot, when you (in the words of the Bloomberg reporter) "may be the most influential individual economic force of the past 20 years."
if he were to die
I pretty much thought that death was the only thing guaranteed in life. Except for taxes, obviously.
Summation 2
Im sure Linus enjoys the title of benevolent leader, but at some point packing it up is best for ones own sanity. Ive been in systems administration so long its easy to lose patience at the slightest question perceived to be too mundane or pedestrian. Developers seem way more apt to fly off the file handle after being chained to a project for a decade.
Cultivate a hobby. For me i moved into management as one is apt to do, and learned how to make soap.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Who is irked? People trying to dump tons of garbage into the mailing lists?
The goal of linus should be to encourage coders to contribute to Linux. Could he do better? I'm sure. But he has done amazingly well so far (service / cloud side / aws / even android had a basis in linux) - linux is huge.
The one BIG missed opportunity in Linux though I think was around wakelocks. That would have really helped connect the google kernel team into development. That's led to a real fork with android and in the long run I think will be missed opportunity. The folks arguing against wakelocks didn't really have code that replaced them effectively and was sad to see code talks and talk walks get bypassed there. I found the anti-wakelock camp depressing.
Linus has stuff online from the early nineties forward, and, to be perfectly honest, any opinion piece of his is 1000% amazing. I've never tried to search it all out and read it over coffee or anything, but slashdotters linking to anything he's ever said is one of my absolute favorite things about this place.
The BEST ones are where he's polite to someone who claims to know The True Path. The other amazing ones include the people who jump around screaming how Intel is about to die off and RISC will demolish CISC and all these other See The Future Guys. Basically, the standard crew of Tech Pope and his friend, the Tech Oracle... but we can view their ludicrous claims in the light of history. So you get to see Linus talk, and be nice, and they ramp up their crap to browbeat him, and eventually he just fucking OWNS them, drops the mic... and a 1-2 decades later we can be like "oh, looks like Linus was right to be polite at first, right to stick to his guns, right to switch gears from politeness, and right about all of that".
Linus will ultimately be legend.
It is a joke that there isn't an HBO series about him already :P
You mean the butthurt from the poetterix crew for getting flak for their own poor attitude, crap code, and generally poor disposition?
I think we need Linus a bit more to keep a lid on these... less than stellarly performing artifacts sticking in the community's craw.
And Steve's personality was also NOT easy to deal with.
or describe in polite terms.
You don't get to be a leader, by being a nice guy in the commitee.
You have to have a vision to blaze a path to it, and be flexible enough to adapt with the detours.
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
We should move Linux to D.
I am not saying Torvalds is "most influential individual economic force of the past 20 years.", but I am struggling to think of one person who is *definitely* more influential.
Who's on your easy list of 20 people? I am very curious.
[citation needed]
Bits of code, random ramblings: jakimfett.com
I can name 20 (or 50, or maybe 100) people with far more economic influence in the last 20 years than this douchebag.
Yet somehow you could not type one name here...
Really? Do it. How many people have built an operating system that has made it onto more computers than any other? You've got Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds in that rarified air. Fact is without these two men steering the ship computers would not be where they are. Linux is dominant server side and Android forked from it, which is now on more smartphones than any other OS. You've got embedded linux, desktop, server...etc. You'd be hard pressed to find many people in the last 20 years who actually changed the entire world. Bill Gates, Linus, Maybe Steve Jobs...politicians don't have this much influence, maybe a few American presidents because America likes war...Alan Greenspan maybe, Putin some people in China...other than that...not really seeing who else had more impact. So please, share.
GNU Open source is like a religion.
And RMS is our Moses, a smelly goat herder that bought the commandments down from the mountain.
Then delivered the message to the Pharaoh.
the plagues (?)
boot sector viruses
file infections
macro viruses
email attachments
networked viruses
script kiddies
malware
ransomware
consultants
outsourcing
H1B visa
IBM
ORACLE
MICROSOFT
PHB IT managers
Help(less) Desk
Linus would be our John the Baptist.
We are still waiting for our Son of God to bring the faith to the masses.
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
Whaddya mean, "if" he was to die?
Is there a chance that Linus is immortal?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Huh? The GPL makes explicit use of both capitalism and copyright law.
You get to be a leader by getting people to follow you. Bluster and bullying works for some, others actually pull it off by being nice (not the same as trying to please everyone!). Others still lead quietly by example. And what works for some will put off others. Of course, it helps to be right often; if you are, you don't have to give people shit to make them follow, but they'll still follow if you do. That is what Jobs and Torvalds had/have going for them.
The one disadvantage about quiet leadership is that you will much less talked and written about. Or maybe that's an advantage...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Honestly being blunt and aggressive is how you don't end up with a steaming pile of crap.
Being all wishy washy and nice is not how you get things done, you crush egos mercilessly when you have facts in hand.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
When Linus has been piped into the great dev-null in the sky, I for one will welcome Lennart Poettering as the new Emperor of Linux. We'll call it Lenux!
What, too early to start a flame war?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
This all comes as Torvalds has been irking more and more people with his aggressive attitude.
Who?
Honest to god, I'm asking: Which people?
Are these 'people' software engineers contributing to the kernel? Are these 'people' being directly addressed and directly insulted by Linus? Are these 'people' attempting to submit subpar code to the kernel?
Or are these who are more interested in 'safe spaces' in open source communities? Are these 'people' acting outraged because of their perception of what other people think about Linus says?
I am disturbed by this brewing character assassination campaign targeted at Linus because he says things that might possibly hurt a person's feelings. Shame on the submitter (pacopico) for throwing around an accusation as if it's fact.
We've been down this road for, what, 20 years? We know by now that if Linus says something mean, it's because a person has done or said something incompetent. The 'fix' is not for Linus to change his tone; the fix is for the recipient of the insult to not be incompetent.
None of the above (with the exception of companies) would have been lost if there was only RMS's open source world. Viruses would still be a thing, H1B Visas would have came into being, and managlement would have gone on mangling. Those are constructs inherent to any human-technology based system.
Huh? The GPL makes explicit use of both capitalism and copyright law.
Stop with the actual facts, you are confusing people who have already made up their minds... It's perception that rules the day (and what gets politicians elected, but that's another thread. )
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You don't get to be a leader, by being a nice guy in the commitee
I'm convinced that committees are the death of real leadership. A real leader takes advice and makes decisions decisively. Best leaders always have detractors, usually weak people who want a committee to decide things, after all who wants to follow a dictator? It is much easier to put the blame on a good leader than it is to blame a committee.
And Committees tend to make "safe" decisions, but are just as wrong (if not more so) than a strong leader. A real leader can see when things aren't going well, and make adjustments, where a committee only takes up time while everyone is discussing what the best move is.
I have a great disdain for committees, mainly because they are formed to avoid leadership responsibility.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Some people, particularly on Slashdot, are changing the definition of what it means to be blunt in order to whitewash public perception of Mr. Torvald's conduct. Being blunt is direct and to the point without consideration for the feelings of others. Telling a person you hope someone disconnects the brakes on their car so they get into a car accident isn't being blunt. It's being a sociopathic asshole and often that's what Linus is. It's downright shameful that "nerds", people who've likely faced physical or verbal abuse at least once their life, make excuses for such inexcusable behavior.
Yes but only if they get rid of Poettering and his crew first.
It is a joke that there isn't an HBO series about him already :P
I've seen pictures of Linus, and I've seen HBO ... Not sure I'd enjoy the intersection of Linus Torvalds and Gratuitous Boobs.
Is the article inaccurate? Pushing some sort of evil agenda?
If it is, then tell us how. And if not, then why should we care about your personal vendetta against the organization?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
others actually pull it off by being nice
Who are those people?
“The best leaders are those their people hardly know exist.
The next best is a leader who is loved and praised.
Next comes the one who is feared.
The worst one is the leader that is despised
The best leaders value their words, and use them sparingly.
When they have accomplished their task,
the people say, “Amazing!
We did it, all by ourselves!”
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
There are six basic styles of leadership. As you point out, coerciveness can be effective, for some people. Personally - I'd rather lose my job than to work for a coercive person. A Steve Jobs could offer me more money in a year than I've made in my entire life, and I'd turn his ass down because I can't work like that.
Torvalds doesn't strike me as a coercive leader. He seems more like an authoritarian. His authoritarianism is mixed in with a little pacesetting, but he's basically authoritarian.
People commonly dislike both authoritarians and coercive leaders, so they confuse the two. After a course in leadership, you understand that the two types of assholes are very distinct from each other.
And, yeah, I'm an asshole too. I'm an authoritarian, tempered with a coaching approach.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If you craft your definition of "most influential individual economic force" carefully, then yes, Linus can qualify.
But consider that without Richard Stallman and the GPL, linux wouldn't have been what it is now.
And to stay in the tech world, how about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.
And political figures like Vladimir Putin.
Or maybe Osama bin Laden, just look at how much has changed since 9/11.
But even though it was in 1983 so that it doesn't qualify, Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was perhaps the most influential man in the history of mankind. By correctly identifying a false alarm, he may very well have prevented an all out nuclear war.
Linus' attitude is not 'aggressive.' It's completely unprofessional and undignified. The community will be better off without him.
... For all he is... including his bluntness which bruises the precious egos of the special snowflakes. Sometimes you need to be able to call someone a moron. There are too many of them to waste any more time on them than that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Most of those are only mildly influential in local (American spheres). Seriously... what did Rick Perry or Chris Christy ever do that affected the lives of people in Turkey? In Austria? In Australia?
Even Bernake, Greenspan, sure some fairly wild gyrations in the stockmarket but its debatable how much impact they personally REALLY had on it; and billions of people are really only tangentially affected by it.
Hell, I'm a home owner in north america with mortgage; and although its surely impacted my mortgage rate and home equity values and it really hasn't affected my life much.
As in would it have been much different with anyone else at the wheel? Or was it, to channel Asimov, predictable by 'pschohistory'; as a likely outcome of a systemic flaw; and all but inevitable; given the banking infrastructure, political landscapes, international dependencies, and so on...
I wonder: would the same people that advocated the "calling females 'bossy' = sexist" view use consistent logic and assert that calling males "aggressive" is code for "I'm basically unable to defend my own position, am losing the argument, and therefore must apply guile and ad hominem attacks to stand my ground?" Be honest, now.
Is how someone interprets your criticism of their work defined by how much face they stand to lose if they're wrong, regardless of whether the criticism is grounded in facts and experience?
> You don't get to be a leader, by being a nice guy in the commitee.
Sure you do. It's just *harder* to do it that way. That's why most leaders are pricks.
Because it's hard to be nice AND lead.
But it's easy to lead and be a prick.
Meetings
None of us are as dumb as all of us./a
Time to offend someone
Given how many submitters will submit an article with a comment of "He said X! He said X! Definitely gonna be nothing but X!" and the article actually says "Not X at all! Definitely not X! Anything but X! Never gonna be X!", I'm impressed that nobody submitted the article and said one of the following:
1) Linus Torvald's death is imminent.
2) Linus says he's going to kill himself.
3) Linux says Linux is doomed once he dies.
Name one media outlet that isn't controlled. I don't think it is possible.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
He might enjoy that intersection though. I know I would.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
My understanding is that Linus is still very much the head of the Linux kernel as a project, so what happens to the project management after he's gone? Greg Kroah-Hartman might be a great right hand man but I don't know if he has the political standing or history to step in as the benevolent dictator of a project critical to multiple multi-billion dollar companies.
Do they put in place a Debian-like foundation, or something like Eclipse.org where it's essentially directed by the major distributions.
Maybe there's a succession plan in place already but this strikes me as a major question that needs to be addressed.
I stole this Sig
Tim Cook.
Gabe Newell.
Larry Page.
Mark Zuckerberg.
Marc Andreesen.
Mark Benioff.
Jen-Husng Hwang.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
He's always been aggressive and blunt. He's "irking more and more people" because those people want to take away what Linus has and he's not about to let them.
I have never read anything where Linus is acting inappropriately. Sure he likes to rant, but when he is wrong, he will admit it.
He is even kind to clueless newbies who try to lecture him on the "evils" of goto on LKML.
His best rants are condemning breaking user space and hurting usability. But for every post that makes the news, there are at least 1000 that don't, because Linus isn't some rabid douche.
The kernel gets has so many contributors from around the world that he has to draw the line in a very explicit manner else people like Kay Sievers will keep submitting broken patches.
If anything he is usually pretty restrained, compared to project managers of big companies. The only difference is that development of the Linux kernel is in full public view.
You haven't answered his first question - is the article accurate or not?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yeah, my band director in high school was pretty much a dick sometimes and had a reputation for being difficult to deal with.
We also won all but one of the 10 or so contests that we entered in my first year in marching band, getting 2nd place in the one where we didn't get 1st place. That included winning the state championship in our class.
These two facts are not unrelated.
Part of the reason that Linux exists and is so successful is Linus' personality and work ethic. I don't think he's out to make new friends in the programming world, but he is very successful at what he's actually doing.
Do you have ESP?
But each and every one has had more economic impact than Linus Travois, which was the original question I was responding too. Also, these are just the USA names off the top of my head, in no order of importance. I'm sure there are more important people from around the world.
Rick Perry and Chris Christy both managed states with large economies. Rick Perry was governor of Texas which would be on the top 10 list of countries if it was still an independent country, Christy is the governor of Jew Jersey, which may not be AS big, is still significant.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
FOX NEWS! oh umm wait :P
It is a joke that there isn't an HBO series about him already :P
I've seen pictures of Linus, and I've seen HBO ... Not sure I'd enjoy the intersection of Linus Torvalds and Gratuitous Boobs.
It wouldn't be Linus - it would be someone like Brad Pitt or Mark Wahlberg. Of course, the actor would wear glasses to take on a "nerd" persona.
Do you have ESP?
Okay. And what proof do you have of them actually being nice?
Sure, some of the macro economic decision makers will have had more impact than Torvalds.
But among the billionaires you probably won't find anyone more influential.
The kernel itself has been valued a few years ago as more than 1b € to redevelop from scratch.
Now consider the entire industry use of Linux that has come from the kernel being available and continuously developed. Sure the BSDs where there first. But with Linux the *nix-alike OSes exploded. Without Linux the scene probably would would look very different.
I'd say Torvalds probably is at least as important as Bill Gates, maybe a little more important. So the goalpost is around the 80b $ billionaire that influenced probably trillions worth of companies and markets. US presidents might still top that, though probably not all. No matter how you slice it, Torvalds has had an impressive impact on the world.
The list of six styles I could find (wikipedia, of course) doesn't mention coercive. Do you have a pointer to a different list?
Ridiculous.
Remove any of the people on your list (except maybe Elon Musk, and that remains to be seen), and things would've just been business as usual with a different person in the seat.
Linus has made an incalculable change to the landscape. We are in a different world because of him.
Disclaimer: I am not a Linux zealot. Windows at home, Mac at work, iPhone in my pocket. But credit where it's due, for fuck's sake.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Partly it's just Linus (and he's not covering his ignorance with bluster; he's not often wrong, but he sometimes is and will admit it to someone who argues right back), but his famous rants have the benefit that people other than the direct addressee hear them. Which has two benefits:
He doesn't need a source, he just told you that coerciveness was one of the styles.
What I generally do with coercive people is conspicuously ignore them other than tell them "if you shout, I can't listen to you". Even works with muggers and cops, if you got the balls. It has happened to me, though, that I had to give a physics demo as to why you don't bring a knife or a taser to a polite conversation.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
And Steve's personality was also NOT easy to deal with. or describe in polite terms.
You don't get to be a leader, by being a nice guy in the commitee.
Bullshit. People are people, and some are fucking pricks. Some are not.
Once upon a time, I had your prejudice, believeing that the key to success was being an almost pathological prick.
Then I met people who were on the food chain way above those I based my opinion on - and they were almost universally decent folk.
People like Jobs did not get where they were because they were pricks. Pricks are everywhere, and some of them living under bridges.
Jobs had a pretty precise vision, and got where he got to in spite of his abrasiveness, not because of it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
i no longer trust greg k-h: at the last (last but one?) merge window he was aggressively pushing for kdbus inclusion. as far as i'm concerned he nothing but kay's shill now. what trust he built up over many years by maintaining 2.4 branch, usb core etc... he has completely blown by aggressively pushing for kdbus inclusion i cannot believe no-one has called him out in public for this behaviour. if you are reading this greg: sorry, but your name is dirt now, and you shoudl just hang up your keyboard and call it a day: no-one should trust you now.
of course it's an over simplification.
But, with my non-humorous hat on, I would say MICROSOFT is the biggest problem on the internet.
They have made the most insecure operating system and become the most popular by being the cheapest.
Then they set most of the default options to the least secure choice.
That coupled with the relative ignorance of the general population (including too much of IT management) leads to the false image of Microsoft being a good software choice.
I like unix in all it's flavors. Modular and upgradeable, without tossing out all your software.
I like Apple after OS X ( I liked my Apple 2+ also)
I like Forth, C, Lisp, Modula-2(etc)
I like GNU, Hurd, Linux, Plan 9, Lilith, Rust, & Go.
Software the people can see under the hood ( and fix it if they are good enough) is GREAT !
I have run too much software that is buggy, spyware and exploits in it.
After 30 years of IT experience (VAX,Unix,SAN,admin, architect,development,teaching,B.S.in C.S.), that is my opinion.
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
I think all those people are important, but if I had to pick one name ou of that list as the single most influential, I'd probably still have to go with Linus.
I feel like Bill Gates/Steve Jobs and Microsoft/Apple products, have certainly been very popular and made lots of money, I feel like their contributions where ultimately more to their own bottom line than to society as a whole. Linus' contribution was for everyone, and I feel to a large extent, made the contributions of proprietary software as a whole less significant.
Sure we all like the latest greatest gadgets. That's not new. Apple did a great job at creating the latest greatest things. But linux is what made it so we could make our own things.
Which brings us to Stallman. If anyone on the list had a chance at overtaking Linus, it would be Stallman, but I feel like his ideology kind of gets in the way of progress. I really do have a soft spot for idealists, but I feel like Stallman just has a unique set of values that the world (even people "on his side") just doesn't share. Even if you think he agree with Stallman, he will be the first to point out that exactly how he is actually your ideological opponent. I think he has done a lot of good, but I think he could have done a lot more had he been a little more pragmatic and a little less ideological (like Linus).
As for the Politicians... They get elected, start wars and score political points, and get succeeded. But I don't think any of this stuff really matters in the long term. Some are better some are worse, some stronger, some weaker. It's all the same sort of stuff. The ways in which "world leaders" change the world is through the same crude tools they have used for centuries.
Even bin Laden (certainly influential), is just the latest crazy person willing to murder lots of innocent people. He was quite successful relative to the other crazies, but I think the damage caused by bin laden is dwarfed by the damage that would be caused if you could somehow undo the good that free/open source software has done. Linus is by far not the only person deserving the credit, but neither is bin Laden.
I really feel like the most influential people aren't those that played the game the best. It is the people who changed what game we were playing.
Jesus
Buddha
Ghandi
-- ... Adults cooperate, children compete.
This attitude of might make right is for children
You always know what he thinks.
Put the cards on the table, figure out which ones are good. Lather, rinse, repeat.
A smart man wants to know when he is wrong.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
'I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearign a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways'. Linus Torvalds July 2013
Uh, you're confusing the Tao Te Ching with The Art of War. Different authors, different focus.
If you're claiming that Torvalds had more economic impact than Greenspan, Bernanke or Yellen, you, quite frankly are out of touch.
You are missing my point.
Torvalds and his Linux project planted a seed that otherwise might not have existed at all. The ramifications of that seed have been felt the world over.
Greenspan et al; someone was going to be sitting in his chair, doing his job. If it wasn't Greenspan, it would have been someone else. If it had been someone else it would have been someone else working within the same political landscape, with the same goals, and they would have been picked and vetted for the job by the same committees. Then they'd be faced with the same problems, and they'd have the same advisory committees working for them; they'd still just one voice on the federal reserve board; the rest of the board would have been the same; they'd be presented the same options, solutions, and recommendations.
Did Greenspan break the mold? Did he go in a bold and unexpected new direction? Or did he simply do, more or less, exactly what any of the other eligible candidate for his job would have done had they been appointed instead?
Would another chairman of the board caught the subprime crisis in 2007 before it hit? I mean there were ample committees, advisers, and other board members... was Greenspan personally a singular force of will in suppressing them all? Or was it a systemic failure of the entire bureaucracy there? I contend it was the latter.
If Greenspan had taken the year off for health reasons, and ets pick someone else... lets say then vice chair Donald Kohn sat as interim chair that year would the actions of the Fed in 2006 been significantly different? Would HE have seen the subprime mortgage collapse sitting as interim chair instead of merely being a board member? What would he have done differently? What makes you think anything at all would have been different?
If it doesn't really matter who is actually sitting in the chair, then how personal impact can you claim they had?
There's no question that the ramifications of the policy actions were felt the world over. BUT how much was *his* policy decisions vs the momentum of committee group-think set against nearly inexorable economic turbulence that reflected not just current policy but the accumulation of decades of momentum? The fact that he was even selected as the chair in itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy -- the fed got exactly exactly the leadership that it selected. Had Greenspan had dramatically different views Greenspan would not have been selected for the chair in the first place.
Well, there's certainly few or no reports about them being verbally abusing or mean towards people. Note that a person can be blunt without being mean. Mean people tend to make things personal. That doesn't mean that these individuals don't demand quality.
The opensource/OS wars are no different than any other religion. Those with a god-head thrive and press forward fastest up until mortality gets in the way. Overwhelmingly, religions that favor single supreme leader (usually based on bloodline) end up withering and eventually perishing through fragmentation and indecision, while those that adopt a kind of voting democracy for leadership, thrive and grow sustainably. Perhaps when Linus is no longer in the driver's seat, Linux will fragment, being pulled apart by commercial interest. Meanwhile, FreeBSD, having never had a benevolent dictator, will continue with its elected core team, nominated committers, and filtered contributors just like it has for the past 20+ years. If we are still using OS's built upon "C", my money bet is on FreeBSD.
Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
Real leaders also take responsibility for their Leadership failures. How frequently do you see THAT happen in Technology or Politics?
Roughly never, I'd wager.
Rick Perry and Chris Christy both managed states with large economies.
But they didn't create those economies. They were there when they got there. All they did was steer them for a few years. If Rick Perry hadn't run and been elected Governor, someone else would have been.
Most of the economy churns along entirely with or without him.
The rest of the elected officials, and the bureaucracy would have been the same. Therefore most of the policy decisions would have mostly been exactly the same if someone else had been elected.
At best Rick Perry put his personal touches on a few things here and there; and has a few signature bits that are - his influence. How much economic impact did those personal touches actually have? They're mostly just little rivulets and swirls on top of the larger economy that moves with its own momentum.
Ditto for Christie
Again, they've had more impact on the world's economy than Linus Travois. Which is all I'm trying to claim.... In fact, ANYBODY who has earned significantly more money than Linus Travois in the last 20 years by definition has had more economic impact.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
One thing that he was absolutely wrong about: his insistence that commit messages be wrapped to 72 characters. The summary is that he railed against the idea that display tools (like HTML) should automatically wrap text because humans know better how to wrap text.
Why the 72 character limit? So it appropriately works on 1960's display technology.
Oh, and the hilarious thing about this is that he word wrapped his own HTML text in the very Gtihub post, making it display wrong in the web browser, while everyone else's text looks correct at the right width as prescribed by the page's CSS rules.
https://github.com/torvalds/li...
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
You really think that? Linux runs in practically all data-centers globally, saving trillions of dollars world-wide for business annually. It powers most devices, including a very popular type of mobile phone, used by billions, and you're comparing that to a president of the United States, or even worse, a governor of just one state? These are career politicians that have only a marginal influence on an economy that largely drives itself. Politicians are simply not that influential. Of your list, only Bill Gates qualifies as comparable, as he did something enormous as well: create a market for software alone (before MS, software was a means to sell hardware). The others are small fry: politicians and people that run a business worth a few hundred billion with simply operate in the economy. They didn't change it.
You're probably mislead by the fact that from the economic impact that Torvalds made, he didn't become exceedingly wealthy. But the impact is there, and it is enormous.
If you're claiming that Torvalds had more economic impact than Greenspan, Bernanke or Yellen, you, quite frankly are out of touch.
You are missing my point.
Torvalds and his Linux project planted a seed that otherwise might not have existed at all.
I think your history is a little revisionist. Linus didn't start from scratch. He built Linux off the work of people and institutions that came before him or were even contemporaries. He also wasn't the only one working on a free or low cost "unix like" operating system, but his system is the one that took off. If there had been no Linus and no Linux, there would surely have been something else. It might even have been better (but maybe not).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One example I can think of: Head coach of the Seattle Seahawks Pete Carroll, winner of one out of two SuperBowl appearances in the past two years. He's obviously doing something right in terms of leadership. By all reports, he's a laid-back guy, likes to make the organization fun for the players, and doesn't subscribe to the "yelling, blustering" type of coaching style that's so prevalent. Your personality traits are made public in such a high-profile position, so I don't think there's much of a question as to the veracity of these reports. A lot of pundits said that sort of thing might work in college football, but wouldn't work in the pros.
Obviously, anyone in charge of an organization has to mean business at times and get serious, but being an abusive asshole isn't a pre-requisite for being successful. I think there may be a *correlation* between that personality type and the people who are driven to make it to the top and be successful, but it's not universal by any means.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
His personality also held a lot of stuff back. The threw out good ideas and championed bad ones. To him, the look was better than the functionality.
People followed him because they were getting paid, same as any other worker in the world. The fan base came from Apple customers first and foremost, not from the Apple employees themselves.
He built Linux off the work of people and institutions that came before him or were even contemporaries.
Of course. To a point.
He also wasn't the only one working on a free or low cost "unix like" operating system, but his system is the one that took off.
GPL + Linux is why it took off. I give Stallman a lot credit; perhaps even more than Linus; because the GPL was a big deal. Still Linus chose to use it.
If there had been no Linus and no Linux, there would surely have been something else.
Surely? I'm not remotely convinced. GNU Hurd might have gotten off the ground if it had received the attention that went to linux... or it might still be a toy project in a university somewhere chasing ideological perfection rather than the practical.
It really is the unique blend of ideology + practicality that made GNU/Linux special and I'm not convinced it was inevitably going to happen.
Without Microsoft uncoupling the OS from the hardware, we'd still be in a land of 100's of barely compatible systems each with their own OS.
Who's to say that Linus would even have had the idea to code his own version of Minix if not for Microsoft's work in the 80's to make the OS a separate thing.
As much as the fanboys will hate it, I view Apple as the biggest threat in the future. They want to eliminate our ability to chose not only what computer we buy but also what we can do with our own computers. Apple are as bad, if not worse than Microsoft at paying lip service to open standards and co-opting them into ones that are dependent on their technologies.
Remember that the real damage that Microsoft did to computing and IT in general wasn't an insecure OS. It was vendor lock-in and sabotaging competitors. People are following Apple down the same path today.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The list of six styles I could find (wikipedia, of course) doesn't mention coercive. Do you have a pointer to a different list?
http://www.fastcompany.com/183...
http://www.educational-busines...
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
In fact, ANYBODY who has earned significantly more money than Linus Travois
Once is a typo... but twice needs correcting: Torvalds not Travois.
in the last 20 years by definition has had more economic impact.
I disagree. How on earth do you rationalize defining ones economic impact in terms of simply earning more money than someone?
I define it as how much economic activity can trace back to the actions of that person. And I credit Linus writing Linux and releasing it under the GPL as having absolutely immense impact on business and enterprise around the world. I credit Stallman with that economic impact as well; for releasing the GPL.
Further, I think those events were relatively unique; I don't think that something else equivalent would have happened if Stallman and Torvalds hadn't taken those specific steps. For example, Red Hat doesn't exist; vMware doesn't exist; Xen doesn't exist... Would we have virtualization ? Sure but it might just be proprietary; and it might all belong to IBM and Sun. Assuming windows still happens, and we roll aorund to 2012 with HyperV... that comes out but its competing with IBM and Sun ... its not free.
Meanwhile in another facet... SCO v IBM never happens... that right there is several lifetimes of economic activity for normal people...
Actually, yes he did... unless you have a definition of "from scratch" that is so absurdly overbroad to the point that the expression no longer carries any meaning.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
He built Linux off the work of people and institutions that came before him or were even contemporaries.
Of course. To a point.
He also wasn't the only one working on a free or low cost "unix like" operating system, but his system is the one that took off.
GPL + Linux is why it took off. I give Stallman a lot credit; perhaps even more than Linus; because the GPL was a big deal. Still Linus chose to use it.
If there had been no Linus and no Linux, there would surely have been something else.
Surely? I'm not remotely convinced. GNU Hurd might have gotten off the ground if it had received the attention that went to linux... or it might still be a toy project in a university somewhere chasing ideological perfection rather than the practical.
It really is the unique blend of ideology + practicality that made GNU/Linux special and I'm not convinced it was inevitably going to happen.
I guess we need to define what "something else" is and maybe the answer for you lies in the fact that you refer to it as GNU/Linux. Let's say there was no Linux. We still have the BSDs that would have gotten some additional attention. There is the whole GPL thing which people have different feelings about. You could take the view that with the less restrictive license and having a less fractured UNIX world, the BSDs would have gotten farther than Linux has.
If the ideology behind the GPL is extremely important to you then maybe you're right in the sense that that particular philosophy would have not gotten as far without Linus.
If we are to be honest, I'd say the major reason it took off was that it was open source, but GPL isn't the only open source licensing model and many would argue it's not the best.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1838481/6-leadership-styles-and-when-you-should-use-them
Pacesetting, authoriative, affiliative, coaching, coercive, democratic.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
He created his own kernel and patterned the file system after Multics. He knew and admitted that a kernel is useless on its own and so worked with the GNU folks to build an OS around his kernel.
So without Linus there may not have been anything exactly equivalent to GNU/Linux but there would have been the BSDs. And the BSDs may or may not have thrived the way Linux did. No way to know for sure, but there almost certainly would have been a widely available free UNIX like OS without Linus.
Some of us are exceptional, however. Your name is missing an 'r' and you left your end anchor just dangling out there, so...
We still have the BSDs that would have gotten some additional attention.
Maybe. Big maybe. I think there is a 'community' to GPL code that the BSDs wouldn't have necessarily "inherited" had GNU/Linux not happened. I think people were attracted to the GPL and its ideology who wouldn't have simply contributed to BSD if that were the only thing.
The BSDs might also have had a lot more trouble gaining commercial / enterprise viability without the GPL GNU/Linux out front. The BSDs are much more susceptible to embrace/extend than GPL is; and the BSDs are at greater risk of becoming closed source / proprietary than GPL code.
I don't doubt that the BSDs would have existed as student projects at universities etc, but I'm not convinced they'd be as strong as they are today without the GPL and GNU/Linux in the world; let alone stronger, which is what you suggest. I contend they might even be weaker.
Sorry, meant Minix, not Multics
Scott Walker is perhaps the most obvious recent conter-example. As governor, he turned around the economy of a failing state. In part, he did this by preventing other politicians from screwing things up, which is a much more substantial task than him personally not screwing up.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Actually, he patterned the file system after Minux, not Multix. He did not use any Minux code.
While what Linux would ultimately become was certainly not built entirely from scratch, particularly after the GNU tools started getting bundled with it, Linus most definitely *DID* start from scratch.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But there are lot of people turned off/scared off by the GPL. Even people who had no intention of making their code proprietary. Or perhaps initially wanted to create a closed product but could be convinced to open source it later on. You could easily argue that the BSDs would have had an easier time getting commercial/enterprise viability than Linux but BSD got a later start.
Linux got out of the gate a year or two before BSD because of lawsuit that put the status of BSD in question. It was '93 or so before that was cleared up and by that time Linux had a lot of momentum. Lots of people would argue that OS/2 was a superior OS to DOS/Windows but Windows was first to market and was good enough.
And let's be clear, copies or forks of BSD might be susceptible to embrace/extend but BSD itself would always be there.
So things might have looked a lot different without Linus but not necessarily worse and perhaps better.
Look at it this way. Alan Greenspan in many ways was a product of his time. Still, someone else in that same role at the same point in history probably would have not made the exact same decisions or commanded the same respect he did. The markets hung on his every utterance. In the end it may have turned out to be a wash no matter who ran the Fed, but a couple of different decisions either by the Fed itself or by the market could made some big differences. We do not know.
By the same token, Linus was a product of his time. He wrote Linux because he, like many people saw a need/demand for a free UNIX for X86. There were other cheap or free versions of UNIX in the works or already available. If Linus hadn't created the Linux kernel, some other UNIX or UNIXen would have filled the void that Linux did. The results may have been quite a bit different or largely the same. We do not know.
Or at least people put up with your personality flaws if you have something they want bad enough. However, top talent can almost certainly get theirs from someone else, so you'll left with the mediocre and below, or just the truly desperate if you're nasty enough.
Wasn't there a Slashdot article a few months ago about Linux not getting enough new volunteer developers since they don't want to deal with the associated drama?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Do you seriously think that hadn't been done several times before Bill Gates wrote his first line of code? A very good example is CP/M - the thing that MSDOS was a cut down clone of when Bill Gates bought it from Tim Paterson.
The tollboth guy? He STILL has his job? Now that's a broken system.
Who? Does he really think he's as important to the economy as the CEO of Halliburton or a pile of other companies with headquarters in his state?
The "Jew Jersey" bit above from that poster suggests that it's another deliberate insult and not a mistake. He's here on a personal mission to put the geeks in line and tell us that we do not matter as much as we think we do.
So I don't think we can really take his "economic impact" line at face value or even stick to his goalposts of that being the best measure of influence.
You could say that about anybody. Newton - nothing special, if he wasn't around a dozen or so people would have covered all he did given a few decades :)
Ever considered that my just mean you are blurring the difference between where religion stops and other things start?
eg. What would Jesus do? Starbucks didn't exist back in those times, so no, that question makes zero sense when ordering a coffee at Starbucks.
The post that I responded to suggested that Alan Greenspan shouldn't be thought of as having more economic impact than Torvalds because if Greenspan hadn't been in his position, someone else would have been and history would have largely turned out the same (which may or may not be true).
My argument is that there were many people working towards the same end that Linus was, and BSD even got there first but was held back by legal battles.
Newton was ground breaking. Linux, not particularly. Not technically anyway.
What does set Linux apart from the BSDs is that BSD is the whole enchilada, - not just the kernel. You could argue (and many have) that it was the combination of GNU and Linux was the key to success. You could also say that BSD would have never enjoyed that same success even if Linux had never come along because GNU/Linux encouraged/promoted shared development in a way that BSD didn't. I'm not sure I buy that.
However, if you are going to make that point then Linus becomes just one of many people responsible for it's success. He clearly was one of (but not the only) key player and he's the one it's named after.
"...about a guy who is neither a genius nor a hero, nor a great inventor, he just did a very good job over a long period of time in a difficult role as technical leader..."
Lets talk about this for a sec.
Does he have to be a genius? Can he really not be a hero to those of us that admire strong leadership and a huge "get it done" mentality in a world where everyone is too busy navel gazing to solve problems? And what is really meant by "invention"?
Lastly, why is someone who does a very good job in a difficult role as a technical leader, qualified by "just"?
" Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, or Bill Joy"
Did I shit talk these badasses?
Let me break it down:
Linus just started doing. He got shit from all directions, and kept doing. "Experts" came and told him why he would fail, making predictions that all were wrong, and he kept doing. He's still doing, *right this second*. He didn't sit around making excuses about how he's not Dennis Ritchie- he did. And he did well.
The best things are when he walks into a thread and tells everyone that they are wrong, and then just keeps going. Sometimes he doesn't care- he didn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. He could code faster than people could bitch, he could integrate faster than people could debate, and that made a working product.
Maybe there's no genius in that. But there is immense effort, and a willingness to be stubborn even when it cost him.
" but every so often he acts like a total d**k"
Ya, I file those under "the good parts".
"That kind of remark could get someone fired from a tech company."
The fact that most companies couldn't deal with someone like Linus is a huge weakness of most companies. It's their loss. In the interest of removing conflict, they expunge productivity and creativity. What do you think Linus would say upon thinking about the fact that his amazing rants would get him fired? Think he cries about it?
I mean, I don't think so.
You get to be a leader by getting people to follow you.
And a corollary to that is that a leader is somebody who goes ahead of the followers. I suspect that Linus has stopped being the one who runs ahead of the development of Linux, and perhaps he is getting a bit frustrated over the position he is in. This is similar to the old problem with revolutionary leaders, in a way: when the revolution is over, there is no longer the need for them and their ability to inspire a great, simple vision; it is time for the grey administrators to take over.
Once is a typo... but twice needs correcting: Torvalds not Travois.
Thanks, darn autocorrect and horrible spelling skills... I apologize, there is no ill intent...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Do you know anything about the GPL, capitalism or copyrights?
Yes, do you?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Just because you're ignorant of Yeshua doesn't mean everyone else is.
One thing I've read about Jobs is that, while working for him could be miserable, many people came out of the experience with the feeling that they'd accomplished something remarkable (and many had no desire to repeat that experience).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Steve killed the Lisa and gave us NeXT. The NeXT was a horrible failure if otherwise a great product. The NeXT is now OSX, but Apple's closed bully-everyone tactics are not new. Microsoft has been doing that for years! No revolution. there. They didn't even make their own kernel - it's Mach.
Linus has said some things that seem stupid to me, because they're overgeneralizations. C++ and Subversion are very useful, for example, just not for Linux kernel development. Subversion is almost completely useless for Linus' use case, though, and I can make a good argument against introducing C++. Linus has blasted both of them without qualification.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Microsoft didn't decouple OS from hardware. They produced PC-DOS for the IBM PC, and then people started cloning the PC, much as people had bought Itel and Amdahl IBM-alikes in the mainframe days. Or, for that matter, much as different companies had produced different CP/M computers. Microsoft provided an OS (and, later, another one), and people made computers for it. Given the trend towards shrink-wrap software, and IBM's failure to keep the PC uncloned, this was inevitable regardless of whether we're talking about MS-DOS or CP/M-86 or whatever.
Apple isn't eliminating our ability to choose what we buy. If they even wanted to, they'd need to sell low-end products, which they don't do and don't intend to. They aren't eliminating the ability to do what the user wants with desktop and laptop computers, and aren't going to. I don't know which open standards you're talking about, but I will point out that Apple maintains a large amount of F/OSS that it uses. Consider Darwin, LLVM, and CUPS off the top of my head.
While Apple wants vendor lock-in, just like everybody else, how are they sabotaging competitors? I'm aware of patent lawsuits, but that isn't anywhere near what Microsoft did.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you're claiming that Torvalds had more economic impact than Greenspan, Bernanke or Yellen, you, quite frankly are out of touch.
What companies make their fortune based upon their work? And before you claim something is their work please provide a modicum of evidence that the results they "produced" would not have happened anyway. e.g. if not for Greenspan there would be no economy because _____.
He is a business man not a real programmer.
His abilities as a programmer are debated, and largely unconfirmed. He co-wrote DONKEY.BAS with Neil Konzen - but while Bill has often told the story, I've never heard Neil say what Bill's contribution was. Aside from that little is proven - the people I've met who were around at the time described him as a disingenuous self-marketer who was a good BASIC programmer, but who liked to let people (not lied, but took credit for) believe the work of Paul Allen (who was confirmed as a very good programmer) was his. He certainly was not a project manager, but he was very good at politics and made good use of his fathers contacts.
I suspect the answer is none - regardless of time frame.
It has nothing to do with the Linux kernel. If you read the post in context, he was mad that GitHub didn't enforce 72 character limits with all projects.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
He was mad that GitHub wasn't enforcing this policy with all projects, even though it's absofuckinglutely unnecessary. And if you look at the page, he was writing a post with manual 72-ish line breaks inside an HTML context (GitHub comments), making it look stupid.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
The rational position on believing something with no substantiating evidence is to not believe. You're free to do otherwise, but don't complain when people call you out for acting irrationally.
You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You'll be in for a rude surprise when dead and realize that there was plenty of evidence -- you were just too blind to see it.
Well no body lives forever, I think the Linux movement and community will go on long after Linus, me and anyone else who's in the open source movement passes on. Linux, is far larger than this question can encompass, Linux may splinter after Linus, but it will go on.
In this situation that just means the capacitor is in backwards and not a new pope of a cult that doesn't exist.