Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 22nd Aug 2007 17:52 UTC, submitted by Dan Warne
"The development of the kernel has changed, and Linux is just getting better and better. However, with a community as large and fractured as the Linux community, it can sometimes be hard to get a big picture overview of where Linux is going: what's happening with kernel version 2.6? Will there be a version 3.0? What has Linus been up to lately? What does he get up to in his spare time?
I had the opportunity to chat with the original creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, in a number of email exchanges."
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Member since:
2006-03-31
In the interview, Torvalds writes:
"I dislike the frothing-at-the-mouth ideology (to me, ideology should be something personal, not something you push on other people) and I think it's much more interesting to see how Open Source actually generates a better process for doing complex technology, than push the 'freedom' angle and push an ideology."
The community is essentially divided between this issue: is corporate involvement good for open source projects like Linux? One side of the community believes that corporate involvement fundamentally violates the basic principles of free software; these people are called "frothing-at-the-mouth" ideologues. The other extreme of the community believes open source is just an another development model that should ultimately be used for the private sector. I think most members of the community are somewhere in between: we appreciate the open source model and wish to protect its tenets while welcoming companies that spend money to improve open source projects.
There is no clear-cut evidence that corporate involvement is bad for Linux. So I feel the future can go in two ways:
1) Private influence impedes proper development of Linux. The community will eventually be split along the idealogical line stated above.
2) Private influence, as it has been so far, continues to improve Linux. The "frothing-at-the-mouth" ideologues cannot prove the validity of their claims, and thus the question stated above is resolved.