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."
Permalink for comment 265066
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:
2005-07-15
>Way back in the day when software began to get commercialized,
It doesn't become commercialized, it become proprietary.
Stallman has nothing against commercial software.
>and attracted a few followers on campuses, but made next to no headway outside of the academic setting.
In the 80s GNU was really famous, especially in the proprietary Unix world. Almost everyone installed this great and free GNU software on top of their proprietary Unix.
>they were never able to get their kernel to the point of even being usable, let alone fully functional.
They choosed a far more complex architecture for their kernel so that Linux was faster ready to use. With Linux beeing ready to use there was no need for another kernel so that the GNU kernel become the lowest possible priority and the GNU project focused on other missing parts.
>Eventually, he wrote a paper on it called the Cathedral and the Bazaar, which basically layed out in detail the rules and style of management that Linus had inadvertently created when he brought help in to develop Linux.
It was not only Linux, other projects used the same development strategy. It is also interesting to know that the first releases of this paper spoke about Free Software. Also Netscape was inspired by a version of this paper which spoke about Free Software.
>Virtually overnight, all kinds of projects that had been calling themselves Free Software, started to identify themselves as Open Source.
I can't see that. The largest part of the base system comes from GNU and all this projects call themselves as Free Software and not as Open Source. Also other important projects like KDE and many more call themselves Free Software.
>For the most part, people use the two words interchangably, and while they will buy in somewhat to the five freedoms and all that,
its 4 freedoms!
>when you really explain the free software philosophy to them, they will side more with the practical then the religious side of things.
I have made a different experience. Most people don't care about how you develop software but they understand the role of computers and software in today's world and the ethical questions which arise out of them.
>As it stands, the FSF is still pretty much ignored by the people who matter in the Linux community. [..] The open source methodology however, mixes wonderfully with corporate involvement, to the point where massive pillers of the industry like IBM, SUN, Novell, and Apple are all following the principals Eric Raymond published in his CatB papers.
I disagree. A lot of the important projects are GNU projects. And other projects like KDE also federalize themselves with the FSF. The same is true for companies. Just look at the list of supporters of FSF and the other Free Software Foundations there you will find names like Google, HP, IBM, Nokia, Intel, JBoss, Nec, Cisco, Samsung, MySQL, Sun,...
>Not only that, but saying that software has freedoms just like people demeans the whole idea of what freedom is.
Not the software should have freedom. But people should have freedom who depend more and more on computers and software to participate in the digital society/culture, to learn, to work, to communicate, etc. Also government and economy should have freedom by controlling their IT infrastructure. That's the important point!
PS: Because you said that Free Software and the FSF is pretty much ignored by important people in the GNU/Linux world I can't resist in citing a important person of the Linux (the kernel) world, Alan Cox (said to Eric Raymond): "That would be because we believe in Free Software and doing the right thing (a practice you appear to have given up on). Maybe it is time the term 'open source' also did the decent thing and died out with you."
Edited 2007-08-22 21:41