Slashdot Mirror
Torvalds' Secret Sauce For Linux: Willing To Be Wrong (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Linux turns 25 this year(!!). To mark the event, IEEE Spectrum has a piece on the history of Linux and why it succeeded where others failed. In an accompanying question and answer with Linus Torvalds, Torvalds explains the combination of youthful chutzpah, openness to other's ideas, and a willingness to unwind technical decisions that he thinks were critical to the OS's development: "I credit the fact that I didn't know what the hell I was setting myself up for for a lot of the success of Linux. [...] The thing about bad technical decisions is that you can always undo them. [...] I'd rather make a decision that turns out to be wrong later than waffle about possible alternatives for too long."
For some reason this reminds me of Grand Nagus Zek complimenting Quark on the genius of opening a bar at the mouth of the Galaxy's first stable wormhole.
Regardless of the fact that Quark had no idea that the Wormhole existed in the first place...
Do yoi always believe what RMS wants you to believe?
Computer won't work
So, exactly the same as if systemd is allowed to fuck things up?
Systemd is a program. It's the first program the kernel calls after it's done it's work. There are several programs available that do the work of systemd. How could Linus (a single Sr developer on a world wide project) enforce anyone's choice of program through the kernel? Sheer will?
Virtually all distribution maintainers, from institutional to consumer grade, have moved their supported init system to systemd. There's nothing stopping you from using initd or upstart if that's your preference, but you'd better get used to writing startup scripts.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.