But both spent a ton of money. How many millions were spent just on the primaries?

The realistic choices for president were limited to those who could amass a large fortune in contributions. There's some democracy left in this country at the local level, but even those races are getting expensive unless you're in a small town.

And one more thing, that last line could easily be interpreted as a swipe at Linus, - that Linux will be fine without him, but it's not intended that way.

One sign of a good leader is that you can leave without having things fall apart behind you.

Here's my take on it. I'm in a leadership position so this does hit home with me but it could anyone. If you've been around long enough, you've had bosses or coworkers that have had a "blunt" style. You've also probably worked with shrinking violets. The "blunt" people are generally way more effective leaders than shrinking violets but they definitely have their limitations and that style can come back to bite them.

I have had no personal interaction with Linus so all of his supposed bluntness might be blown out of proportion. Anyway, it is one thing to be a leader of a project that lots of very talented people want to work on and quite another to be a successful leader on a project that's more of a mixed bag (which most are). In my mind good leaders know what their weaknesses are and work to eradicate them.

Kudos to Linus for writing the kernel, hooking up with the GNU people and keeping it all going. But I'm not at all convinced that his leadership style is intrinsic to the success of Linux. Obviously his leadership style has been at least good enough, but one wonders if more success could have been possible.

Anyway, I agree with Linus in that Linux will be just fine without him.

Yeah, there are labor laws for a reason and if you're using "contractors" you don't have to pay minimum wage for example. There are some Uber drivers that have learned how to game the system and earn OK money, but they work hard and hustle customers.

The average Uber driver probably makes less than minimum wage, - especially once their expenses are factored in. Uber pays a premium for working certain hours, accepting 90% of rides, taking at least one ride per hour in that time frame, etc. It's hard to qualify for the premium all the time.

So really what it amounts to is that Uber is dancing around labor laws so that they can offer a cheaper and more convenient service. There may or may not be evil intentions, but that's the end result.

I guess the question is when does an arrangement for services cross the line into exploitation? It's not always obvious. I may be perfectly happy to do something for a few bucks on the side or even for free just for the experience or the kicks. But what if someone else is trying to earn a living doing the same thing?

For example, let's say you'd think it be great to sail across the Atlantic on a 70 foot keel boat but you lack experience and a boat. You run across someone advertising the need for crew on a two month sailing tour, - no experience necessary. You have to help pay for food and supplies, plus you have to help sail and maintain the boat along the way. But otherwise there's no charge AND no pay. Sounds like quite an adventure right? Well, a week into it you discover that there's a whole lot of work to do and the "captain" isn't doing much of it. In fact, he's got paying guests that aren't doing anything at all. You want off but the best he'll do is drop you at the next island and you've got pay for your own way home.

Well, there are laws that govern this kind of thing because it is very easy to exploit people.

It may help but it doesn't solve the problem. We require that any contractors we utilize belong to a corporation, - whether their own or someone else's but it doesn't mean that we couldn't run afoul of IRS rules.

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.

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.

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.

Sorry, meant Minix, not Multics

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.

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.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but being a stubborn prick might have been ultimately what killed Steve Jobs. He delayed surgery for 9 months because he insisted on "treating" his cancer through alternative medicine. He refused to listen to the people around him.

You can get far by being an asshole if you're an asshole that's right. Most everyone gets it wrong at some point though and after awhile a lot of these people get trapped in their own reality distortion field.

Cause Jobs and his type have been the only effective leaders ever?

Cause they're aren't examples of people just like him throughout history who ultimately failed miserably and met unceremonious ends?

I'm not saying "be nice". I'm saying "be versatile". Because if being harsh is the only trick up your sleeve, you can only effectively lead certain types of people, and probably only as long as they aren't able to stick a knife in your back when they get the opportunity. Being versatile allows you to lead more people in more situations. Even Jobs was able to be charming when he thought it would serve him.

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).

You can filter people without calling them morons or fucktards. When you use terms like that you are bringing emotion into what might be better left as a factual discussion. "Your code is broken. I can't use it." is often much more effective than "You're a moron". If you can be more specific about how it's broken, all the better. Eventually you might decide you're done with them because they're just not good enough or they're having a negative influence on the team for whatever reason. Again, you can cut them lose without the personal attacks.

There are people who need a good kick in the ass now and then and will respond if given one. There are others who need to be handled differently yet are still valuable members of the team. You can denigrate them by calling them snowflakes or you can learn how to deal with them effectively. A good leader can adjust their style as needed.

There are a lot of people who won't process anything said after being called a "fucktard" and will go into defensive mode. Generally what follows is not at all productive.

I have no personal experience with Linus but have worked with several people that have had a "blunt" way of dealing with incompetence and dissent. As a means of dealing with incompetence it is one thing, but as a means of dealing with dissent it is quite another. It's a bullying tactic and discourages disagreement. If you're always right, or right often enough, you can get away with it. But it also has the effect of quieting people that should really be listened to.