CNN Sits Down With Linus Torvalds 264
just_another_sean writes "Calling him 'reclusive' and the 'leader of the Open Source Revolution' CNN has an interview with Linus Torvalds. From the article: "I actually only work with a few handfuls so I tend to directly interact with maybe 10 - 20 people and they in turn interact with other people. So depending on how you count, if you count just the core people, 20 -50 people. If you count everybody who's involved; five thousand people -- and you can really put the number anywhere in between... Almost, pretty much all, real work is done over e-mail so it doesn't matter where people are."
Leader? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda odd (Score:5, Insightful)
Why `reclusive?' (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeking or preferring seclusion or isolation.
Does this describe Linus?
The Beating Drums (Score:5, Insightful)
The maddening crowd seems to be too intellectually limited to understand that their need for heroes, saints and sinners is about as interesting as reading a popularization of a first year anthropology text book.
Not to mention the hours lost mugging for CNN that could have been spent productively.
just my loose change
Has /. ever done an interview with Linus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leader? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:If being reclusive means (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Has /. ever done an interview with Linus? (Score:1, Insightful)
And he's pretty much right.
Favourite quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen to that.
Re:If being reclusive means (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why `reclusive?' (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think Linus is reclusive, just that the "corporate world" prefers to use his creation without giving him much due.
While there will be many posts claiming that he's not THE leader of OSS there is absolutely no doubt that he is one of the most important figures in the OSS revolution along with RMS, Bruce Perens/Eric Raymond, Ian Murdock, etc.
Re:Leader? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I do not think there is such a thing, at least not to a degree that most brainless "celebrities" get. For a "personality cult" one needs continuous media hyping in places watched by the sort of sheeple who are prone to falling for "personalities" in the first place.
Linux and FOSS crowd is far more likely to become zealous about ideas (such as the whole concept of FOSS or the GPL) rather then people. Sure, some do admire Linus personally, but we are not beyond getting into regular flame wars with him when he is demonstrably wrong. Just check out the whole BitKeeper saga on the LKLM.
Re:Leader? (Score:2, Insightful)
For better or worse, I think your comment suggest that he is a leader.
I just gave Linus, +1, insightful: (Score:3, Insightful)
LT: Absolutely. There was a bit of bragging, there was also a bit of, hey, I still, the way I do my work is I sit these days downstairs in my basement alone. And it's nice to just talk to people and a lot of it was probably just social, just saying, hey this is a way to interact with other geeks who are probably also socially inadequate in many ways.
Pretty good insight - it's a way for geeks to socialize other than Star Trek conventions!
(Ducks)
On science and software development:
LT: We shouldn't give credit to Linux per se. There were open source projects and free software before Linux was there. Linux in many ways is one of the more visible and one of the bigger technical projects in this area and it changed how people looked at it because Linux took both the practical and ideological approach. At the same time I don't think this whole "openness" notion is new. In fact I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples' ideas and making it into what science is today, and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn't do. So openness is not something new, it is something that actually has worked for a long time.
Great comparison between open software and science, both of which a lot of people don't get.
On the uselessness of meetings:
KLS: So the face to face thing is a little bit overrated?
LT: I think so. For example I long ago decided I will never go to meetings again because I think face to face meetings are the biggest waste of time you can ever have. I think most people who work at offices must share my opinion on meetings. Nothing ever gets done. When things get done, you usually have someone come into your office to talk about it. But a lot of the time the real work gets done by people sitting, especially in programming, alone in front of their computers doing what they do best.
Dilbert freed from the pointy-haired boss type - Pretty cool. Interesting interview, I may and try and watch it rather than read it.
Re:Leader? (Score:0, Insightful)
Linux isn't an operating system, it's a cult. It's sad, but there are actually people out there that will buy a product specifically because it says it supports Linux. They believe that Linux is the answer to everything. They'll buy iPods and install Linux on them. They'll choose their mobile phone based solely on the fact that it runs Linux, even though it has no bearing on the device's functionality what-so-ever. They just need to see that "runs Linux" sticker on the box. If, for example, Apple swapped out XNU for the Linux kernel, and made no other changes to Mac OS X, I bet you'd see hundreds of Linux zealots buying Macs -- even if it made no difference in the performance or usability of the OS whatsoever. They need that piece of mind that they can always say they're running Linux.
Just having the industry support Linux as a mainstream OS isn't good enough for these people. They won't be happy until there are no other OS's available accept their precious Linux, which they consider to be God's gift to computers.
It's only a matter of time before I start having geeks knock on my door wanting to tell me the message of the Lord and savior, Linus Torvalds.
Re:I Can Hear It Now... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the embedded side, there are more and more distro which are using replacements for the GNU tookchain and glibc like busybox [busybox.net] and uClibc, thus avoiding many of the GNU tools you typically see in a Linux distro. [uclibc.org]
Stallman's generalization is mostly true, but not always true...
reclusive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leader? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's good to see that he didn't bite (Score:5, Insightful)
KLS: Another reason, because it's an alternative to Microsoft?
LT: Well that is, I think, played up more than it necessarily needs to be. Because there is a very vocal side to this which is the whole anti Microsoft thing. I think it makes a better story than is necessarily true in real life.
For a techie guy who doesn't have reams of PR guys behind him and telling him what he should say, he handled the press pretty well.
I thought CNN were supposed to be respectable, like the US version of the BBC or something? It seemed like they were just looking for some big scoop with regards to people being Anti-Microsoft rather than trying to have an interesting interview with a major contributor to an alternative OS.
Re:Leader? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows Sucks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's good to see that he didn't bite (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, this kind of questioning probably comes from the point of the interviewers looking at the open source community... Let's face facts, there are a lot of OSS mouthpieces out there who take every oppertunity to slight Microsoft. It's part of the subculture and probably for all the wrong reasons. How many slashdotters, if they were asked the same question, would have replied "Gates is a fucktard! OSS 4 Life, Holmes!"
The unfortunate part of all of this is that I think some of the more vocal MS bashers have less to do with Linus' appreciation of open source and his own goals than just trying to find acceptance in a geek culture. The active MS basher probably does little for the OSS community whereas the active member leading or contributing to OSS projects probably shrug MS off and realize they (the OSS community) do what they do to make new software, not to piss on MS's parade.
Or as Ian MacKaye once put it: "Empty barrels make the most noise".
Headline/content disconnect (Score:3, Insightful)
The first Torvalds quote in the article: "Well today what I do mostly is actually communication."
And working directly with 10-20 people counts as being part of a farily large team. If you spent an average of an hour a week discussing issues with those individuals, then that amounts to half your work time.
Note that headlines and articles are usually written by different people, and often different viewpoints and motivations are evident.
Linus = The Babe; RMS = Ty Cobb (Score:1, Insightful)
Linus is Babe Ruth to Stallman's Ty Cobb.
Re:Was Gore correct when he said this...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuts. Saying you took the initiative in doing something does not mean that you accomplished it single handedly, or even that you cause it to happen. It means that you got off your butt and started working towards a goal before others joined in, and that is obviously true in this case.
RMS, for example, clearly took the initiative in creating the free software movement, even though Linux got done long before the Hurd.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. If a statement like Gore's, that can be misread to imply something that is (harmlessly) false sets your blood boiling, I'll bet you are fuming mad when you hear politicians say more outrageous stuff, like: