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Linus Torvalds Isn't Looking 10 Years Ahead For Linux and That's OK
darthcamaro writes: At the Linuxcon conference in Seattle today, Linus Torvalds responded to questions about Linux security and about the next 10 years of Linux. For security, Torvalds isn't too worried as he sees it just being about dealing with bugs. When it comes to having a roadmap he's not worried either as he just leaves that to others. "I'm a very plodding, pedestrian person and look only about six months ahead," Torvalds said. "I look at the current release and the next one, as I don't think planning 10 years ahead is sane."
Difference is:
Corporation - We should lay off half the workforce, that would save us so much money.
[6 months later]
Corporation - Why is productivity so low?
Linus - Lets get/keep things working
[6 months later]
Linus - Lets get/keep things working
That's the thing about bloat. It's always used by someone, somewhere.
I would strongly argue that if the feature is used by less than 30% of the users, maybe it shouldn't be in the OS at all.
Linux is used by so many different people, and by such a diverse group of people, that almost everyone probably uses a feature that is used by less than 30% of the users.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Today's laptops are around four times as powerful as a decade ago.
Far more than 4 times as powerful, my child. Try more like 50 times as powerful as 2005.
I think when people are talking about corporations being shortsighted, they aren't talking about corporations failing to plan ahead, they are talking about corporations taking actions that clearly damage their own future potential. Linus taking Linux day by day, or in 6-month sprints, or whatever, isn't really the same thing because that doesn't hinder Linux's ability to compete. At worst, it helps it sub-optimally. This as opposed to killing your most profitable product line, or laying off the people who work on your next product instead of the people who sell last year's product, etc..
It would surprise me though if he doesn't have at least some long-term goals that take over 6 months to complete and that he's not focussed on working on right now but has in his back-pocket, but maybe he really doesn't.
I also think the statement about corporate shortsightedness is somewhat overused, although not entirely without merit. When somebody says something like that, I sometimes click on their posting history to see if they also make claims like "big Pharma will never release cures because palliative care is more profitable" and the like to help me determine if they're logically consistent and therefore might be worth paying attention to, or just reflexively take anti-corporate positions (likewise for pro-corporate positions). And yes, I know they could believe that all corporations *except* big Pharma are short-sighted.
Not true. There may be things in the kernel that could be in user space, or in a kmod, or done in a driver. Linus is concerned about the code that 100% of Linux users are required to have, not the stuff that can be easily added or removed from an install.
maybe he isn't american and therefore doesn't hyphenate everything