this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero. I’m thinking here also of his rant not long ago on social.kernel.org (a kernel devs microblog instance) that was essentially a pretty good anti-anti-leftism tirade in true Torvalds fashion.
EDIT:
Torvalds's anti-anti-left post (I was curious to read it again):
It's just that almost everyone else that could do it ended up being fucking ghouls of people.
Torvalds can be... brusque, sure. But he doesn't support child labor, he doesn't cheat on his wife, and he isn't some crazy cult leader waging a war against workers' rights.
Another interesting thing to consider.
To be clear, he is rich. But he's not crazy crazy rich, like nowhere near billionaire status.
With that in mind, his kernel is a key component of RedHat's, SuSE's and Canonical whole business, with at least two of those being multi billion dollar businesses.
His kernel is a key component of Android phones, which represent over 50 billion a year in hardware spend, and a bunch of software money on top of that.
His kernel is foundational to most hosting/cloud services with just mind blowing billions of revenue quarterly.
It's used in almost every embedded device on the planet, networking gear, set top boxes, thermostats, televisions, just nearly everything.
People with a fraction of that sort of relevance are billionaires several times over. A number of billionaires owe much of their success to him. Yet he is not among their numbers.
Now there's more to things than just a kernel to be sure, but across the hundreds of billions of dollars made while running Linux, there was probably plenty of room for him to carve out a few billion for himself were he that sort of person, but he cares about the work more than gaming the dollars. I have a great deal of respect for that.
Means that while he may not always be right, but I at least believe his assessments are sincere and not trying to drive some grift or cover some insecurity about being left behind.
gitis a way more important contribution to the world that the linux kernel IMO. Its basically the assembly line of almost all modern software production. And Linus actually wrote most of the initial code for it. With Linux he organized the project but was almost immediately not a major contributor. He developed git in the process of maintaining the linux repo.I disagree. Git is great but we'd have done fine with Subversion or whatever. Could you imagine the whole internet running on Windows Server though? The thought alone makes my skin crawl.
Free software would be just using freebsd or whatever, it wouldn't be that different
Can't two things both be important in different ways? Why must we always relativise?
Well, I think Linus Torvalds is one of the rare rich people who actually "deserves" being rich.
I think the main motive behind leftism should be stopping 8 people from owning the 50% of the world's wealth, not to distribute Linus Torvalds' 50 million dollars which a well deserved amount of wealth for someone who created the OS which runs the modern world.
Besides, what Linus owns is not even a droplet compared to billionaires like Bezos, Musk or Bill Gates
I think it's a shining example of the 'right' sort of rich. Despite a significance that overwhelmingly exceeds usual billionaire level, he's not nearly so 'rich' and yet he has enough to just not worry about money, but he has earned it.
It’s a contribution thing. He contributed enough to society to deserve to not worry about money for the rest of his life. It’s rare though since we have a bunch of billionaires who skim the rewards from huge swaths of the population who also have contributed their part.
The financialization of retirement is a huge part of the problem for the middle class (or what’s left of it, upper-lower-class is probably more accurate). We have to invest in these assholes in order to save for retirement. The harder workers in services, laborers, and fields don’t even get that.
Yea. It's almost like caring about your craft and being motivated chiefly to just make good things and fix things ... aren't terrible character traits?!?
he doesn't cheat on his wife so far.
Well, we all know he beats his wife......
...................in monopoly! Give me those brown properties!!!
Why's it gotta be the brown properties?
The man loves going to brown town, what's wrong with that?
They're the cheapest to aquire, put hotels on, and they're right at the start of the board. If you overshoot go, you're PAYING $250 instead of recieving $200 if you land on baltic. And you, as the owner of the brown properties would either get $250 or $450 everytime.
All for just $610 to buy both, and upgrade them both to hotels.
He just seems frustrated. And I respect that. I’m a nerd who’s often frustrated as well.
Or we could just... not glorify people we barely know and invariably be disappointed when it comes out they're flawed some way or another.
I remember this. That was a great day to be on the internet.
I wonder what direction the Linux kernel will go once he's gone. Obviously it will continue to go on and Torvalds should get a statue somewhere if he doesn't already have one.
I don't follow thinigs closely at all, but I'm under the impression he's already starting to kinda take his hands off of the wheel? If so, maybe that picture is emerging now, at least behind the scenes.
Linus hasn't written kernel code in years at this point, however he still is the final gate keeper of what gets merged and an active code reviewer, he manages the entire direction of the project.
As of what will happen when Linus passes, that's already been decided. The position of projects leader will go to his most trusted project co-maintainer, which we have a good idea of who that is.
For the uninformed, who is that?
There are a few candidates, the most prominent are probably :
Greg Kroah-Hartman is speculated to be the most likely candidate, but it also depends on a few factors. Like, if Linus dies suddenly vs dying slowly or just stepping down, there'd be a big difference in selection process.
Ofc, things may change in the future and there's many other talented developers who can be considered. Nothing is set in stone.
Thanks for the details. With things heading more and more towards arm architecture I’m surprised Sarah Sharp isn’t the leading candidate. But this is all new to me so what do I know lol
It's not like they couldn't be chosen, they have some serious stake in it. Consider their achievements and read the following :
I'd say they meet most if not all of them. All of the potential candidate's are amazingly talented and determined individuals.
He did rule that Rust can be included in the kernel code a bit ago, but IIRC that's the last big thing he did with Linux as of late.
They should do something like GNU from discworld in the code.
That guy seems pretty rad.
Yeah, I would say he has stayed in line with Finnish politics based on how I know of them
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