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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."
If you believe this to be the case, how do you account for the relative success of Linux vs. BSD?
Microsoft, who thinks very clearly and thoroughly over their decisions regarding Windows.
At this very moment, my dad's computer is attempting to download Windows 10 in the background, automatically without asking permission.
He has Dialup internet.
Let that sink in.
Clear and through decisions my ass.
He's managed lead one of the most elaborate software development projects ever undertaken for fifteen years, taking it from a tinker-toy up to one of the most successful of all operating systems. That's pretty impressive. Managers may not produce anything directly of value themselves, but that doesn't mean they are not important for the success of a project.
I'm turning 46, and the "I've accomplished nothing" feeling can eventually go away. The sunrise doesn't care whether you've achieved anything.
It was a success because people far more talented than he was were willing to support an idea
How he earned this support? By luck?
a fucking tool for acting like a CEO
What the... with this statement. This man may (of course) not invent everything, he is of course not the most talented, but he definitely know stuffs he put in the kernel, and know how to do this very good (many of Slashdot users seem to agree that such "ruthless" Linus to be, is the reason why Linux is successful). If he such a tool, unlike a company, some other "more talented" people just fork the kernel and many other talents will follow the new ones.
and attempting to take all the credit for the millions of man-hours of work donated by other people.
You could track who has contributed to Linux kernel. How Linus "attempts to take all credits".
Unlike CEOs, who "invented" X, "designed" Y, and no one knows who the fuck actually done for them.
Just out of curiosity what exactly made the GNU tools so liberating in comparison to the proprietary implementations ? I can't imagine the tools being as feature filled or stable as they are now, so was it price (compilers) ?
I can vouch about how usable my HP-UX, SunOS and AIX workstations became after I installed the GNOME desktop , bash and openssh and a bunch of GNU packages on those. This as 12 years ago. There were/are official vendor repositories for GNU software. So yes, I second the AC, GNU without Linux is still liberating.
I used GNU and other free software tools on SunOS several good years before Linux existed. The GNU tools were better in every way than the SunOS ones. Each GNU knockoff of a UNIX tool had many more features. The C compiler was better than the Sun one, and so was the debugger. There were many new applications that I used that didn't exist on SunOS. At some point I was running a system where SunOS was just a kernel, and everything else came from free software. Linux mostly replaced this SunOS kernel by a different kernel - nice, but not a mind-boggling innovation.
Linux was successful because most of his decisions turned out to be right. The guy is a genius.
I'm not sure decision-making is really his big thing. The first reason Linux was successful is that he's a doer, there's plenty of flag-wavers that want to lead other people but who couldn't get a kernel project off the ground if their life depended on it. Linus is more like the first soldier charging, everyone else coming up from behind. Git is another fine example of this, if you know exactly what you want then just do it yourself. You don't wait around for someone else to write it for you. Obviously this is also a bit of luck with timing, but it's still not a common quality.
The second reason is that he managed to let go, so many people when they create something it's their baby and they want to control everything about it. I'm sure he was as opinionated as ever, but he wanted patches and mailing list discussions. That's why he got talked into using the GPL, it would have been easier to just sit in a corner and say I'm working on it, leave me be. And it never would have become more than a little hobby project by a CS student that'd die when he got a job or girlfriend and couldn't commit the time.
The third reason and maybe biggest is that he never started getting into business or politics, I remember him saying something like that he's building the best kernel he can make and if that'd dethrone Windows it'd be a wholly unintentional side effect. Which means that he's not taking guidance from marketing and sales on making an ABI so you can have proprietary blobs so you can increase revenue or go off evangelizing like RMS, to him the kernel is the ends not simply a means to an end.
Also I'm sure he could have become a CxO somewhere if that's what he'd wanted, but he never wanted the suit. Now many engineers don't want that, but a lot of us would do it anyway if it came with a fat paycheck. As far as I know he's not anyone's boss, the only authority he's got is final say on what goes into the Linux kernel tree. And he's always focused on having a vendor-neutral position, you don't get to hire him and tell him what to do next.
The fourth reason is that he managed to delegate, I've seen people stretch themselves thinner and thinner as the project grew and just burned themselves out. It might come naturally to a manager whose main job is delegating anyway, but it's always hard for a person who likes to know the details to accept that you can't be everywhere in every discussion reviewing every line of code. I think trust comes hard to Linus, he's erred on the side of caution and found conservative maintainers that are in it for the long run though he might have lost some good but impatient talent along the way.
He's always come across to me as a very pragmatic kind of smart, I think "street smart" would be undervaluing it but not the kind of academic 150+ IQ kind of smart. Just a fairly straight forward engineer who will dead-end discussions he won't have or arguments he won't accept in a blunt and occassionally rude way. I'm not sure his decisions are the best, but he's pretty good at cutting through the fluff and getting to the core of the issue. I wish I could do that in my job, no one hour meetings to "discuss" things. Give me the 30 second elevator pitch and I'll tell you if it's worth bothering with. Sigh, a man can dream...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What's your alternative to NetworkManager? Manually configure every WiFi connection?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Linus was incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
How many men could have been at the same place and time, and simply fail the job? (True for Linus Torvalds, also Bill Gates, etc...)
This.
I used to think the "right place at the right time" argument had some merit. It's probably still true a little bit, but only as an opportunity for Linus. It was when I saw how rapidly git was developed and became reliable and usable that I realized it was no fluke. Either Linus was incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time *twice*, or the "luck" argument is nonsense.
I'm turning 46, and the "I've accomplished nothing" feeling can eventually go away. The sunrise doesn't care whether you've achieved anything.
I'm 52. I was in a great relationship with a wonderful woman for 20.5 years. We hugged, kissed and said "I Love You" every day, went almost everywhere together and held hands where ever we went. She died in January 2006 of a brain tumor, just seven weeks after diagnosis. I was strong for her. I was holding her when she died. I heard her last breath, felt her last heartbeat. She was never alone or in any pain. I kept all my promises to her.
I've accomplished everything that really matters. The feeling I have now, when I'm alone at every sunrise, is something else entirely and I'm not sure it will ever go away... Just thought I'd throw that out there for some perspective.
Remember Sue...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .