
Profile of Linus Torvalds - rscnt
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-16/the-creator-of-linux-on-the-future-without-him
======
sampo
_" Torvalds released the Linux operating system from his college dorm room in
Finland in 1991."_

Apparently the reporter assumed that everyone who goes to college, lives in a
dorm room. But in this case that was not true.

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wnewman
"It's weird that a person who can come off as a real grouch has managed to be
such a supremely effective dictator."

It's weird that a writer at the level of Bloomberg would be so weirdly
dogmatic about this. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing weird about
capable people being attracted to a leader who is good at identifying actual
problems and is grouchily intolerant of those actual problems attracting
capable people. Nor anything weird about such a leader motivating the people
who are attracted; nor anything weird about such a leader getting high
performance out of the organization. Supposed examples are not exactly scarce
in business, military, scientific, sports, and entertainment off the top of my
head, and as far as I know they're mostly true, not misleading legends. In
most cases I only know second-hand, and I could be mistaken or misled. But the
most straightforward interpretation of the evidence seems to be that
successful doesn't-suffer-fools-lightly leadership is a pretty common pattern
in sharp results-oriented endeavours.

In contrast, it would make much more sense if a sentence like that in a
profile ended with "...has managed to be such a supremely effective automobile
salesman;" as far as I know retail sales is not full of examples of grouchy
doesn't-suffer-fools-lightly successes. But managing sharply goal-oriented
organizations? Who would think that's inconsistent with what's reported about
Linus here?

Even the prima donna antipattern of being a loose cannon who is flakily
grouchy can be somewhat consistent with success --- people will put up with
irritating inefficient prima donna stuff if there are enough compensating
advantages. But I don't think the article establishes that's what's going on,
and as far as I know it's uncommon for knowledgeable people to think that's
going on. Success always breeds some level of resentment, and some fraction of
people will jump to unusual conclusions, and many thousands of knowledgeable
people know of Linus, so I assume there are some knowledgeable people out
there who believe that he's an unreasonable prima donna. But I can't think of
any individual to nominate as particularly likely to believe this.

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dctoedt
Trivia: In the video he pronounces the first syllable of his first name as
_lie_ ; Wikepedia has an audio file [1] in which someone pronounces it as
_lee._ Perhaps he uses the former to conform to expectations of American
English speakers who are used to Linus Pauling and the Linus character in the
_Peanuts_ comic strip.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Sv-
Linus...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Sv-
Linus_Torvalds2.ogg)

~~~
gtk40
"I'm Lee-nus Torvalds and I pronounce 'Lee-nux' as 'Lee-nux.'"

~~~
Nux
[http://dl.nux.ro/audio/linus-says-linux.oga](http://dl.nux.ro/audio/linus-
says-linux.oga)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
His voice has gotten deeper and his accent has gotten better in all these
years since :)

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arca_vorago
My main criticism of the linux ecosystem is this:

The many eyes theory is broken due to complexity and amount of code, and hence
the primary way to the future is in reduction of both (loc and complexity
thereof). At over 10 million loc these days, linux has become unweildy for
even the most experienced kernel hacker to really understand. This is why I
think microkernels like Minix 3 have a bright future as their development
progresses. (Minix 3 has <15k loc)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Here's the problem: _At what rate_ do microkernels like Minix 3 progress?
Compared to Linux, they progress glacially.

And, when Minix 3 has as much functionality as Linux does, how many loc will
it have? I grant you that you might have some efficiency from the (assumedly)
better architecture, but how much? Would Minix 3 have 5M loc? Would it be
really understandable at that point? (Perhaps more than Linux, because of more
modularity. Still, you're essentially comparing a robust product to a nowhere-
near-production-ready proof-of-concept. It's very much not apples-to-apples.)

~~~
arca_vorago
I completely agree, but one thing to keep in mind is that Minix 3 just
relatively recently got it's BSD license, and I think that was it's main
limiting factor in the past. As for how it progresses, I can't predict the
future, but I think something similar to it could easily get a good boost if
it was embraced/pushed in the sector it's best at, eg embedded devices and
iot. I work along-side scada systems and am constantly appalled at the state
of security on systems.

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malkia
There are some programmers on the planet that I just don't know how to they do
the things they do: Linus Torvalds, Mike Pall (luajit), Edi Weitz (Common
Lisp) and several others, but these were the ones I always remmember from my
limited exposure to the unlimited world of operating systems, languages,
environments and virtual machinery...

~~~
dman
Dont forget Fabrice Bellard!

~~~
vmorgulis
We could add Lorenz Meier (PX4 autopilot for drones) and Terry Davis
(TempleOS).

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baldfat
I feel like I read this story every 6 months.

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soong
"Linux was once 10,000 lines of code and required part-time tending. It’s now
19 million lines of code, and changing it involves a complex hierarchy."

Just wondered: 19 MLOC all driver code included, right?

~~~
castratikron
Grabbed 4.0.5 from kernel.org and counted 19314709 lines.

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jomclaughlin
Dude is 45 years old and we are already planning for his death. In other
industries he would just be hitting his stride. In this one we are getting
fitted for diapers.

~~~
dmix
Is the tech industry really the only one that asks the "what happens if you
[the founder] gets hit by a bus tomorrow?" question.

~~~
mr_sturd
Perhaps just of the ones where [the founder] has their feet still firmly on
the ground.

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ksk
As an aside, how does Linus come across as a grouch? Like any other normal
human being that expresses a range of emotions, he might have exhibited an
imperfect control on his temper/tone. People are way too judgemental / thin
skinned these days.

~~~
Trufa
I am a very thick skinned person, I like people joking about me and like to
joke about others, but let's get not confused about Linus, he's quite a
character, I personally really like him (as far as I know him, basically his
internet persona), but I can perfectly understand how it doesn't fit with a
lot of people.

I find the following phrase hilarious:

>> I find people who think open-source is anti-capitalism to be kind of naive
and slightly stupid.

Now, even if I find it particularly funny, I'm not sure if that's the best
face for open source, maybe someone less confrontative and more politically
correct would be better suited, but he is who he is, and his contribution to
open source, well, need no explanation.

Even so, I wonder if Linux and open source in general would benefit from
having a more friendly / approachable face and have Linus in the technical
side of things.

It's not something that's easy to change though because it wasn't a decision,
it's something that just is.

~~~
ksk
Well, I think that instead people should be more accepting towards others'
personal imperfections. Political correctness should be avoided at all costs
because it's by definition a kind of dishonest manipulation.

~~~
cpncrunch
I don't think it's "political correctness" to prefer not to be verbally
abused. Linus has admitted that he doesn't care about people:

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-
wh...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-why-he-isnt-
nice-i-dont-care-about-
you/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29)

~~~
ksk
>I don't think it's "political correctness" to prefer not to be verbally
abused.

Okay? And? Nobody said that. I was replying to someone thinking we should have
a more 'politically correct' open source face.

Please try and understand what is being said before replying.

~~~
cpncrunch
I did "try and understand" before reply, but sometimes it is difficult to
discern exact meaning. You said we should accept others imperfections, so I'm
assuming you meant Linus' imperfections. That is what I was replying to. I
don't think it's acceptable that people should be verbally abused, and we
shouldn't "accept" it as you say.

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hoopd
> Linus Torvalds is the creator and sole arbiter of the Linux operating system

Well, yeah, but the first rule of journalism is to know your audience and I'd
bet if you asked the readers of Bloomberg to name a few operating systems
they'd say "Windows, OSX, Android, Lin..Lin...Linux." How many would list
things like Darwin or kFreeBSD?

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dougmany
I have the same model keyboard as in the video! Just thought I would share.

~~~
jdecuyper
Which model is it?

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thiagowfx
Misleading title. I'd say click bait. It talks about Linus and Linux but not
about the "future without him" part.

~~~
dang
Ok, we changed the title to something generic. Suggestions for a better title
are welcome, as always.

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emodendroket
I'd go so far as to say this is too generic, but what do I know? In any case I
thought the original title was better.

~~~
dang
It is too generic, but I can't think of anything better. The original isn't
accurate. Suggestions are welcome.

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pschastain
I stopped reading when the author referred to Linux as an operating system.

~~~
donuteaters
Once upon a time, before RMS re-defined the term for his benefit, the phrase
"Operating System" meant what we now call the kernel. You can see the legacy
of this in Computer Science departments around the country where they teach an
"Operating Systems" course which covers implementing schedulers, file systems,
device drivers, etc... Maybe if the GNU folks could have made a usable kernel,
they wouldn't have had to stoop to the petty tactic of trying to take credit
for the Linux "Operating System" with all that GNU/Linux nonsense.

However, clearly the RMS propaganda machine has worked, and now the phrase has
a new meaning to the new generation... So feel free to not read anything that
might contradict with your point of view.

~~~
bobajeff
What about Unix, CP/M, DOS..? None of those are kernels yet they were said to
be operating systems and before GNU was announced.

My question is has Linus ever considered Linux to be the operating system
rather than just the name of the kernel?

~~~
donuteaters
Actually, all of those have something strongly resembling a kernel, and DOS in
particular makes a nice distinction between the basic services (BIOS) and
whatever userland you choose to install on top of it. I think you're making my
point - "Operating System" used to mean the "kernel" before RMS wanted to ride
on Linux's coat tails and Microsoft wanted to bundle their browser anti-
competitively - both of which are distasteful.

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zuron7
The most annoying part of this article is that the reporter refers to the
Linux Kernel as the Linux Operating System.

