First thing I searched for is GCC and I'm really glad he emphasizes how important it was to the origins of Linux. It's historically under appreciated how critical GCC was at that time, how it had far far reaching impacts that changed the path of computing globally.
GCC not only makes Linux possible, but it brought the other unixes closer together, which is instrumental to escaping the vendor lock of the various *nix vendors. That means by the time Linux is reliable enough for production, there is already a lot of cross-platform software to run on it.
People make fun of the GNU Hurd project, but GNU really did work on the toolset in nearly the best order possible; a compiler is fundamental and without it you have nothing.
It took decades for LLVM to finally appear as a workable alternative; even the BSDs relied on GCC.
Ken Thompson and the estate of Dennis Ritchie's copyright claim for the C programming language syntax goes through. It is sold to a copyright troll company that starts demanding licenses from all users.
On a more serious note, a new programming language would really be the next step. If tradition holds, it might turn out to be really hard to use though.
I had to laugh about him using a micro-emacs that has been unmaintained for 25 years :) Apparently the other emacsen are not to his taste, so we can expect something soon :)
I really was surprised that he used µemacs. More than twenty years ago it was my favorite editor, too, and when I read that he still uses it, for one second or so I considered returning to µemacs but snapped out of the reverie very soon after.
I'd love a new C-inspired language (no, Rust is C++-inspired) made from a pragmatic developer like Torvalds. Zig comes very close IMO, but it's still too unstable to be under Linus' radar.
I think having a new production quality C-inspired language is just not practical anymore. There was a thread about improving C language with the auto keyword with a long and well thought out standardization process. After adding some of these features that are clearly missing, there won't be too much improvement possibility compared to C while keeping a C-like type system to warrant the huge amount of work to create a new language.
Wow: that is very early adoption! I'd say Linux, with Slackware, around 1994 (?). Git took me a bit longer for as I was a happy Mercurial user but once I saw the momentum shifting heavily towards Git I switched.
Yeah, updated to make that more clear - though I wasn't insanely far behind on Linux (and had I been a bit older I might have been closer to the beginning).
During the source control wars I was firmly in the Bazaar camp, however - but it seems everything but git is now moribund.
Every once in a while I try to imagine a world where Linux never existed. Some software feels sort-of inevitable. For instance, even if Microsoft and Apple's desktop operating systems had failed, it seems almost certain that there would have been a dominant desktop graphical operating system (OS/2, etc.) so the landscape would have looked fairly similar to today.
Linux just feels different. There have been other open source operating systems, but to me it doesn't feel like they would have inherently taken over the same market that Linux has now if it had never existed. Like, do I really think my phone, my VM server, and my cloud computing infrastructure would be running FreeBSD in this parallel universe? Maybe, but I suspect they would have more likely ended up using separate, more-closed, operating systems.
They probably wouldn't be running the same OS if it was licenced under a BSD licence - the GPL encourages Linux-like projects to be both open and centralized which is why we have Linux today.
And it's all done in a traditional terminal, although I don't use 'vi'. I use this abomination called "micro-emacs", which has absolutely nothing to do with GNU emacs except that some of the key bindings are similar. I got used to it at the University of Helsinki when I was a wee lad, and I've not been able to wean myself from it, although I suspect I will have to soon enough. I hacked up (a very limited) utf-8 support for it a few years ago, but it's really showing its age, and showing all the signs of having been written in the 80's and the version I use was a fork that hasn't been maintained since the mid 90's.
College can really lock you into one editor or another for a lifetime.
There's something fundamental about your first "keystroke shortcut" learning - I believe Excel supported Lotus 1-2-3 shortcuts long after 1-2-3 ceased being a force in the market.
From what I see, nano has pretty much already replaced vi(m) as the standard command-line text editor in Linux (not sure about other UNIX-likes). I believe it is also available for Windows, which is nice...
Impressed that he sees communication as one of his primary responsibilities. I don't think this gets enough recognition at distributed organizations, whose members often take communications for granted or fail to recognize how powerful it can be as a mechanism for more effective everything.
I was also struck by his comments about the preferred tool, email:
Email really ends up being a wonderful tool, and we didn't rely on face-to-face meetings.
I'm sure that topic had been discussed to death long time ago, but I enjoyed reading about the original reasoning for picking the GPL as license for Linux as stated here in this interview.
From the article: "Check back next week for the second part, where Linus explores the lessons and insights gained from three decades at the helm of the Linux kernel."
There is actually a similar question that is asked in the interview:
> Is there anything in the kernel which is not optimal, but would require a complete rewrite to address properly? In other words, the kernel is 30 years old and knowledge, languages and hardware have changed a lot in these 30 years: if you rewrote it from scratch now, what would you change?
And Linus' answer was very interesting for me - and after reading it, I would answer your question (tongue in cheek): "Never, because it seems that Linux developers were quite successful in starting all over again for quite some parts of the Linux kernel."
I guess it's not really an answer to your question, but kind-of ;)
No doubt any replacement would have to be enough better that it's worth the cost (opportunity and otherwise) to both produce and switch to it. Perhaps security/privacy issues might drive a serious rehatching of commonly used software.
It occurred to me that there's enough inertia at this point that you'll likely only see ground-up architecture and/or implementation when some sort of hardware substrate is produced that requires it. Until then, we are on the karmic wheel of cpus that drive os/language design that drive cpu design.
Well, even now Linux is not the only choice (in theory, anyway). As far as desktop, Haiku does not look bad at all. On the server, a BSD is all you need.
As a member of the old Thinkpads/OpenBSD masterrace, I appreciate the concept. It sure can be a pain sometimes though, plus I'm lusting after one of those M1 Mac Minis.
Open Source won't ever make the inventor (and those who blindly follow him) rich in the long term. There is an initial wave of enthusiasm which provides a time window to unload the bags though.
In our economic system, those who produce the most value to other people are able to eek out profits while still helping the purchaser. That incentivizes people to produce value and focus on things that help people the most. Linus undoubtedly has produced incredible value and efficiency gains for the world, and those who want to see such efficiency gains continue want people like him to be rewarded for their behavior.
It's not enough to produce something objectively good? If Linux was pay-for-source or non-GPL, it would be just another crappy UNIX clone with no outstanding features. It never would have been picked up by tinkerers and academia, let alone corporations.
> It's not enough to produce something objectively good?
Sure, as a hobby. But as a full time job orchestrating such a massive project while being a public figure? That's a bigger ask that is better justified when rewarded though other means too.
Because it's not like you write songs which make people dream and fill a stadium to come and hear you play them
Nor you are acting in movies which again make people dream and embrace you as part of their life.
You are writing freaking code, if you don't get the money, all you are left with is the tepid admiration of nerds around the world...can't imagine anybody desiring that.
If Linus were to create a startup tomorrow it's not like people would waive their salary for the opportunity to work for the great man.
To summarize if you don't get money you are left with absolutely nothing in hand.
This maybe true for you but I know that I get a sense of satisfaction from releasing free software and knowing that people around the world are benefitting from it.
Not everyone seems financial riches as the end goal of their efforts.
Most musicians don't get boatloads of cash or to perform in stadiums but instead the appreciation of a handful of people who enjoy their music.
It does depend on your motivation for writing the code as well. If you are coding to solve someone else's problem and feel no benefit from it then indeed money is typically expected.
> Most musicians don't get boatloads of cash or to perform in stadiums but instead the appreciation of a handful of people who enjoy their music.
I think there is a whole world of difference between 60,000 people singing along to something you wrote and having 6,000,000 visits to your Github folder.
Unless you are a robot the 2 feel and therefore are completely different feelings.
Matter of fact the first is a feeling, the second is an acknowledgement that your code works fine.
Businessmen seek to add monetary compensation to the aforementioned acknowledgement , because they know that the sole acknowledgement is not enough to propel future goals they might have.....including playing music in a stadium such as the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen did, or hosting a music festival such as Steve Wozniak US festival
People don't play music so they can get the cheers of 60,000 fans a few times in their career if they are extremely lucky. They play alone, with friends, with family because they like music.
People don't write software like linux to get 6,000,000 likes they can bask in. They write software they need because they like writing software and need that software.
People are successful when they decide to be. Are you successful?
> People are successful when they decide to be. Are you successful?
That is some sort of Politically correct thought where you give everybody participation trophies and everybody is successful (which means that nobody really is)
Like everything there are metrics, Linus doesn't figure in any of the polls which ask people who they admire the most.
Even those going down to #500.
People like Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin...they all figure into those standings.
The way I see it is that Linus already left his mark in history twice over (so far). I don't know how he feels about it[1], but if I were given the choice between being a billionaire and being remembered for a great thing I did, I'd certainly pick the second.
And sure, many people have achieved both, but they didn't take their money with them once they were gone. As long as you have enough to live comfortably, everything else is at most an incidental bonus IMO.
[1]: Though I haven't heard anything suggesting he's anything but pretty okay with his lot in life.
What a wise words and comments to say regarding the matter. I won't be surprised if he had one of the craters on the Mars named after him in the future.
It also seems that in the interview Linus' wisdom really shining through. This perhaps due to the interviewer and interviewee were communicating through email, not in real-time, so both of them have ample time to reason and articulate their questions and answers properly. He who has been given wisdom, has been granted abundant good [1].
I think the interviewer missed the opportunity to ask Linus regarding one of his most popular quotes, “Only wimps use tape backup. REAL men just upload their important stuff on FTP and let the rest of the world mirror it.” The fact that he mainly contributed to the OS and the Git, both are essential components in doing online sharing. Thus it seems that he really took his conviction to be a REAL man, by his definition at least. And to be REAL man is one of the main purposes of life, according to Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If".
Nobody knows who Linus is..in all the "most admired" polls, even those computing down to #500 he doesn't appear.
If you want to be remembered you have to make an effort to put yourself out there...that's the reason why Musk is so shamelessly self promotional in the social arena. Same for Larry Ellison
No? Normally when you write the code, you get the code. This is true for other activities too: You write a song, in the end you get the song, make a painting, in the end, get a painting.
The fanbase and the money are all incidental, and sometimes orthogonal. You could write code that $makes some rich guy richer$ and that will probably make you more money than code that $gets a beer for everyone$, which instead might make you more popular. You could also write code to solve $a very specific problem that only you and 10 other people in the world have$, which will make you neither rich nor popular, but solves the problem that you had, so how valuable that code is all depends on the problem you had. Maybe you write some code that runs your insulin pump, so it keeps you alive without thinking about it. What's that worth? Is it more or less than the $makes some rich guy richer$ code? You decide.
What's even better is that in all of those cases, you still have the code. Even if someone makes a copy of it, even if you give it away, you still get to keep what you wrote. Isn't that fantastic? I think that's fantastic.
I get it. Making money is extremely important to you. Have at it. The world is your oyster. Some people have just moved past that point, which might be tough to accept, but is true, and I think they're on to something there.
> Torvalds seems to have done OK for himself, for reasonable values of "rich".
My guess: VHNWI (very high net worth individual), defined by Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hnwi.asp as the range $5m to $30m. Maybe he's even in the ultra HNWI range.
He doesn't "look" rich, but then, what does rich look like anyway?
I think a reasonable value for "rich" is having a good roof over your head, enough money to comfortably support you and your family for the foreseeable future, and to be doing something you really enjoy.
> First off, I'm doing quite well. I'm not insanely rich, but I'm a well-paid software engineer, doing what I like to do, on my own schedule. I'm not hurting.
GCC not only makes Linux possible, but it brought the other unixes closer together, which is instrumental to escaping the vendor lock of the various *nix vendors. That means by the time Linux is reliable enough for production, there is already a lot of cross-platform software to run on it.