Leader of the Free World (linux)

Wired ^ | 10/15/03 | Gary Rivlin

[Salo]

How Linus Torvalds became benevolent dictator of Planet Linux, the biggest collaborative project in history.

Linus Torvalds wants me to believe he's too boring for this story. The creator of the Linux operating system portrays himself as a mild-mannered soul leading a humdrum life, just another guy lucky enough to own a McMansion in the hills above San Jose courtesy of the money-mad late '90s. Before agreeing to meet me, Torvalds sent an email imagining that I'd be overwhelmed by the tedium of hanging around with the likes of him.

[Salo]

Long, interesting article.

[Salo]

Pinging the Penguin Pinger

[Support Free Republic]

Now that the fundraiser is over, we return you to your normally scheduled Freeping.

But with a hearty thank you!

[SpaceBar]

Everyone mentions Linus, the original kernel author but hardly anyone mentions Richard Stallman, the great unsung genious behind all those nifty gnu tools. He predated Torvald's vision of a free unixy OS, and even started the kernel (hurd), but the rapid development and stability of the linux kernel made it a natural to bundle with the tools to make a complete and full featured operating system.

[Salo]

Evidently, his reputation as a crank has passed his reputation as a genius.

[justlurking]

Thanks for posting this. I just finished reading the original and wanted to be sure it was posted here.

[Salo]

np - I thought it was a very interesting article. To bad the "linux must be communist because his parents are communists" crowd won't be here to read it.

[SpaceBar]

Evidently, his reputation as a crank has passed his reputation as a genius.

He's not a crank, he's just been maligned by the media who equate his vision of intellectual freedom as some sort of commie utopia on three bong hits. Stallman is a genious.

[Salo]

Crank. :-)

(Stallman declined to be interviewed unless this article used his nomenclature throughout.)

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root?

[Coral Snake]

Some seople just don't realize that the reputation that RMS built for himself in the FOSS community is that of a first class PITA. Not only that but if he tried to post an article here he would probably get ZOTed faster than the usual gang of idiots from DU who try it.

[justlurking]

To bad the "linux must be communist because his parents are communists" crowd won't be here to read it.

I saw that point, and thought it was pretty amusing. I can only imagine what he had to endure as a kid.

BTW, what happened to that "crowd"? Did they choose to spread their FUD elsewhere, or did someone make that choice for them?

[Coral Snake]

I think in the case of the Golden Budgie he feels betrayed by Micro$oft because they too gave their source codes and internals to Communist China and therefore he no longer posts for them ANYWHERE. The others (Bush2000 and TheEngineer) are active however and might show up here.
I have also seen a whole new generation of Anti Linux trolls emerging on other FR tech threads.

[isthisnickcool]

Good article. I remember a lot of this stuff when it was happening.

In 1992 I told this SV dbms company they needed to look at Linux. Please. They would not so after months of calling them we built them a Linux box and sent it to their head eng-en-ear. Rest is history....

Wish I had kept emails from Linus back from 91....

[LTCJ]

Bump

[altair]

He predated Torvald's vision of a free unixy OS, and even started the kernel (hurd), but the rapid development and stability of the linux kernel made it a natural to bundle with the tools to make a complete and full featured operating system.

Um, that's not quite the way it happened.

[SpaceBar]

Um, that's not quite the way it happened.

The Hurd and Linux
by Richard Stallman.

People sometimes ask, ``Why did the FSF develop a new free kernel instead of using Linux?'' It's a reasonable question. The answer, briefly, is that that is not the question we faced.

When we started developing the Hurd in 1990, the question facing us was, ``How can we get a free kernel for the GNU system?'' There was no free Unix-like kernel then, and we knew of no other plan to write one. The only way we could expect to have a free kernel was to write it ourselves. So we started.

We heard about Linux after its release. At that time, the question facing us was, ``Should we cancel the Hurd project and use Linux instead?''

We heard that Linux was not at all portable (this may not be true today, but that's what we heard then). And we heard that Linux was architecturally on a par with the Unix kernel; our work was leading to something much more powerful.

Given the years of work we had already put into the Hurd, we decided to finish it rather than throw them away.

If we did face the question that people ask---if Linux were already available, and we were considering whether to start writing another kernel---we would not do it. Instead we would choose another project, something to do a job that no existing free software can do.

But we did start the Hurd, back then, and now we have made it work. We hope its superior architecture will make free operating systems more powerful.

[Salo]

I would imagine they are busy as hell patching systems....

MS has done screwed the pooch again. That's 5, yes, 5 critical updates. I guess we should be glad they are actually patching, but it's still a pain.

BTW, what happened to that "crowd"? Did they choose to spread their FUD elsewhere, or did someone make that choice for them?

[TheEngineer]

Everyone mentions Linus, the original kernel author but hardly anyone mentions Richard Stallman, the great unsung genious behind all those nifty gnu tools.

That's a good point, SpaceBar. But as you can see by the attitudes on this thread and elsewhere, many in the OSS community are quick to criticize Stallman or outright dismiss him as irrelevant.

Yet he has been one of the most influential OSS developers: For example, he is the primary author of GCC (the GNU C compiler) -- which is used to compile the Linux kernel, the Apache web server, Perl, and most other major apps.

Torvalds is the ultimate 'net giver' in the Linux community ('Net giver' meaning one who contributes more than he receives in benefits from Linux) -- yet he doesn't feel it's appropriate to criticize Stallman. IMO, he seems like a fairly decent guy; and he probably appreciates the fact that there would be no Linux without Stallman.

So when I hear some 'back benchers' in the Linux community 'dissing' Stallman, two thoughts come to mind:

1. "What a bunch of ingrates."

2. "What did they contribute to Linux?" (And no... Downloading a free copy from redhat.com is NOT contributing to Linux.)

[Salo]

While I agree with you that Stallman has made many very important contributions to linux, he has degenerated to the point where he is as much of a liabilty as an asset. Think of BadJoe, for example.