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  • Let me make an analogy between programs and recipes.

  • A program is a lot like a recipe. Each one is a list of steps to be-

  • -carried out with rules for how to tell when you're done-

  • -or when to go back. At the end there's a certain result.

  • If you cook you probably exchange recipes with your friends-

  • -and you probably change recipes too.

  • If you've made changes and you, and your friends, like eating it-

  • -then you might give them the changed version of the recipe.

  • Imagine a world where you can't change the recipe-

  • -because somebody has gone out of his way to make it impossible.

  • And imagine that if you share the recipe they will call you a pirate-

  • -and try to put you in prison for years.

  • I use the word "hacker" in its correct and original sense to describe-

  • -someone who pursues computer programming as an artistic passion-

  • -and who also is part of or identifies with the hacker culture-

  • -which is historically programmers who produced the Internet, Linux and WWW.

  • I guess you have to be a hacker to understand the specific mindset-

  • -that is to rebel against the idea that the OS source code should be withheld.

  • This open source attitude doesn't mix smoothly with the free market economy.

  • It's also a threat to the traditional concepts of copyright and intellectual property.

  • Companies like Microsoft that base their business on closed source code-

  • -have tactively molded free software into an image-

  • -of a monster of almost McCarthian proportions.

  • All this made up one of the strangest success stories of the 1990's-

  • -epitomized by the community's gifted leader and invaluable icon.

  • He planted the seed for a movement whose ramifications continue to spread.

  • Linus Torvalds has created a computer system that has struck-

  • -the whole industry with amazement.

  • Linux - an operating system that now runs 8 million of the world's computers.

  • Wired Magazine : "He is a shaman on par with Väinämöinen-

  • -and his operating system Linux is the Internet's most brilliant masterpiece".

  • Torvald's decision to distribute Linux for free and reveal-

  • -its underlying source code has made him a cult figure.

  • Linus Torvalds, the computer genius who dreams of defeating Microsoft,-

  • -actually Bill Gates. How's it going?

  • There are those who say that Linus Torvalds has achieved a-

  • -miracle.

  • The worker ants are constantly in contact with each other by modems-

  • -releasing code, encouraging feedback on modifications-

  • -to create the best possible operating system in the world.

  • San Jose, California

  • I didn't want anybody else to have to go through the same thing I had-

  • -to find something like Linux. Maybe some other computer science student-

  • -needs his own operating system and he doesn't have to start from scratch.

  • It wasn't a fight against the windmills. It wasn't Don Quixote against the world-

  • -trying to make a better place.

  • Come, come. Do you want food?

  • I much prefer working with people over email than face to face.

  • Else you tend to get into all these meaningless arguments and details.

  • Over email you have to think a bit before you send off a reply.

  • Just because we aren't at the same place doesn't mean that we aren't-

  • -together in a social sense. It's like one very, very large shared office.

  • We even have our arguments over the Internet in the same kind of way.

  • This is a huge project. There's never been a software project that I know of-

  • -that's been worked on by so many people from so many disperse places-

  • -to put this all together.

  • The most innovative thing about the Linux community is not its-

  • -source code but the social machine that developed around it.

  • What Linux is...? I suppose I would say...

  • Every computer is different, every floppy disk drive is different-

  • -every hard disk is different, every video controller is different...

  • Linux is the thing that knows how to make all these different parts-

  • -do the simple tasks like "write my file to the disk" or-

  • -"read this file off this floppy I have", or "draw this image on the screen".

  • Linux knows how to talk to these different pieces of hardware-

  • -to make them do the common operations that we need computers to do.

  • What do we mean when we say "Linux"? Some mean the whole operating system-

  • -on which everything that happens in a computer weighs.

  • Some say "Linux", pinpointing the single most important program - the kernel.

  • It has to go back to the person who started it. To the person who-

  • -somehow used the net to create a community of people-

  • -who all felt that their contributions were being valued.

  • That ability to foster cooperation could very well be something-

  • -that can only come from a person raised in a country like Finland.

  • Helsinki, Finland

  • 1969 - it seems to have been such a good year.

  • The moon landing, Woodstock, the birth of ARPANET, that led to Internet.

  • The first steps of UNIX, the operating system for big computers-

  • -and on December 28 Linus Torvalds is born.

  • All children learn primarily through playing.

  • For that reason I think it was very important for Linus to enter-

  • -the computer world when computers still were simple enough even for a-

  • -10-12 year old boy to understand what was inside this machine.

  • In today's world there's so many layers of information and-

  • -complicated stuff between that which is shown on the computer screen-

  • -and that which is inside the machine. It's difficult for the children of today-

  • -to play their way to the insight the same way Linus did.

  • I think it was love at first sight both for my father and for-

  • -Linus who together were childishly excited, both of them, to try-

  • -the possibilities that VIC-20 offered.

  • The place where Linus developed Linux is no longer-

  • -because the walls have been torn down.

  • Here in the corner where the couch is is where Linus' desktop and computer,-

  • -that he worked on, used to be.

  • The biggest change is that he nowadays is a stand up-guru-

  • -because he is used to perform in front of an audience and he can handle them.

  • That might not be surprising, but still striking when compared with how-

  • -he actually was: relatively shy and withdrawn, and not the one who-

  • -got in touch, but his friends were the ones who kept in touch with him.

  • Hello everybody out there using MINIX. I'm doing a free operating system.

  • Just a hobby. Won't be big and professional-

  • -like "GNU" for 386 and 486 AT clones.

  • This has been brewing since April and is starting to get ready.

  • I'd like any feedback on things people like or dislike in MINIX-

  • -as my OS resembles it somewhat. Any suggestions are welcome-

  • -but I won't promise I'll actually implement them.

  • torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi

  • 1991 - The Soviet Union closes down.

  • The Gulf War.

  • The British physicist Tim Berners-Lee-

  • -releases a hypertext system, calling it the "World Wide Web".

  • Microsoft is well on the way for world domination.

  • And on September 17 Linus Torvalds sends the first-

  • -version of Linux, 0.01, to the world, via Internet.

  • The first responses arrive within hours.

  • "Linux was invented here"

  • "University of Helsinki"

  • We first heard whispers in the cafeteria-

  • An operating system was being developed and started to spread.

  • We learned to know Linus better.

  • His programming skills had already been noted here.

  • Linus based Linux on UNIX, because of its basic ideals.

  • The original UNIX operating system had been created by Ken Thompson-

  • -and Dennis Ritchie at AT&T's Bell Labs in 1969.

  • UNIX was in the beginning a relatively free operating system-

  • -and very popular in the university circles.

  • The philosophy is based on two notions:

  • Firstly, everything is a file.

  • Secondly, when you build something you write things that are for a single-

  • -purpose but to do that purpose well.

  • Putting Linux on the net was kind of natural in many ways.

  • There were a lot of small reasons. Like the fact that I thought it was-

  • -a good idea to make Linux available to others so that they could try it out-

  • -and send comments back to me.

  • He really had two choices. He could make it completely free-

  • -or he can try and charge for it.

  • Linux would not exist if he had tried to make profit out of it.

  • Nobody would have bought it. It would have been a dead end.

  • You haven't been here for a while. We've already installed the third version...

  • We had difficulties to fit Linux-stuff into one computer.

  • At first Linus didn't want to release Linux for free.

  • He was thinking hard about what kind of copyright he would use.

  • I persuaded him to release it under the GNU copyright.

  • Especially, as the compiler I used was released under the GPL-

  • -I eventually ended up using the GPL myself.

  • The "GNU General Public License" (GPL) funded by the Free Software Foundation-

  • -in the mid 1980's says that if you change and modify the code-

  • -you have to make your changes and improvements freely available.

  • The GPL hinders any one person to have a monopoly-

  • -over an important piece of technology.

  • I think the timing was good. Even just a year earlier I don't think it-

  • -could've been done, and a year later someone would've done something similar.

  • The Internet hadn't gotten to the general population-

  • -but it was getting very strong in university networks.

  • I'd done a mailing list program in the "C" programming language-

  • I had to expand it and add features.

  • Rapidly thousands of people were interested.

  • It was a surprise. The numbers doubled in short intervals.

  • It was crazy. After 1000 people 2000, the next day 4000 people.

  • Without Internet Linux development would've been like chess by mail.

  • My name of choice was "FREAX".

  • Which was both "free", "freak" plus the "X" that you need for UNIX.

  • I didn't like the name FREAX. It wasn't very commercial...

  • Ari Lemmke, who actually put Linux up for FTP, thought that it really was a bad idea.

  • He really hated the name. He made the FTP site available and just-

  • -called it Linux because that was the working name.

  • The name stuck, and Linux is a much better name...

  • "GEEKS"

  • "NERDS"

  • We have an impressive set of geeks and nerds here.

  • The first question from the easy category: "How do you pronounce Linux?"

  • Well, I pronounce Linux as "Linux".

  • However, the total answer to that is if you're Linus Torvalds-

  • -you probably pronounce it "Leenux". On the other hand,-

  • -if you come from the west coast of the United States-

  • -you pronounce it as "Lynix". And Linus said he doesn't care how you pronounce it-

  • -as long as you just use it!

  • It was in July of 1991-

  • -which was shortly after Linus had released the 0.09 version of the kernel-

  • -that I started playing with Linux. Heard about it on, I think, Usenet.

  • Downloaded it from Finland, started playing with it-

  • -and thought it was really neat!

  • At that point there was very limited trans-Atlantic Internet bandwidth-

  • -so it was very painful to down- load all these packages from Finland.

  • And so I decided: "Well, we need to do something about this"-

  • -and I used my personal workstation, "TSX-11.mit.edu"-

  • -and I set up a mirror archive of all the kernel sources on my private workstation.

  • And that was the first US Linux FTP site that came into existence.

  • The first time I got Linux was I downloaded the floppy images for Linux-

  • -and in the Penn State University computer lab I installed it on one of their machines.

  • They subsequently kicked me out of the computer lab that day-

  • -but that was my first experience with Linux.

  • Very early in 1992 suddenly I didn't know everybody anymore.

  • That it was no longer me and a couple of friends.

  • It was me and a couple of hundred people who I had no idea-

  • -where they were, what they did with the system, and who they are.

  • And that was a big step.

  • University of Helsinki

  • The 1.0 release in 1994 was certainly important and it meant a lot to me-

  • -just because there was a lot of work behind it.

  • It was certainly a landmark to commercial use of Linux.

  • It was really hard to use Linux commercially before 1.0.

  • Welcome to Linux operating system 1.0 press conference.

  • Why is this kind of UNIX-like system done at all -

  • -especially at the University of Helsinki?

  • Because there exists, also for PC, UNIX operating systems -

  • -but they are very expensive.

  • For example, DOS costs about 200 marks.

  • UNIX costs 20 000 marks.

  • It's pretty much for a student to pay.

  • Try going to a computer shop and ask for SCU-Unix.

  • They will look at you as if you were mad.

  • In fact, it is easier to write it yourself!

  • The development process of Linux is odd.

  • It's not a hierarchy, but everyone is free to suggest changes to the code.

  • There's one person who leads, makes the big decisions, and chooses the best ideas:

  • Linus - "the benevolent dictator".

  • Everyone knew that someone had to be the head of this work group-

  • -and Linus was the natural head, given that he did the original core Linux-

  • -kernel and Linus was someone who was a very, very good leader.

  • He's someone who's actually quite humble.

  • He doesn't try to take credit for something he doesn't do.

  • You want to have hundreds, thousands of people working on the kernel-

  • -at the same time. But you don't want to have all these people-

  • -stepping on each other's toes all the time-

  • -because that way most of the time will be spent on resolving-

  • -conflicts between people and you just have flame wars all the time.

  • I used to think that there was this hierarchy where I was at the top-

  • -and they were my lieutenants-

  • -and I don't think it's that way anymore. It's more like a web of trust-

  • -where I have people I trust, and they have people they trust.

  • Well, there are lots of things that motivate developers!

  • There's artistic pride, the satisfaction that you get from doing good craftsman-like-

  • -work. There's the idealist feeling of being part of-

  • -something larger and more important than you are.

  • There's a desire to help the world and see that solutions happen.

  • In the absence of monetary rewards most people, most of the time,-

  • -are playing for a kind of reputation reward among their peers.

  • One strength of the Linux development world-

  • -is that practically every software author can be contacted directly by email.

  • Ted Ts'o was crucial in the spread of Linux in the United States.

  • To be fair, it's very easy to say:

  • "If we were in charge we wouldn't do these things".

  • But then again, we're not getting all these email messages saying:

  • "Please, let me add this new feature!"

  • So I don't know what I would actually do if I were really in charge.

  • Dave Miller is a maintainer who reviews changes-

  • -that developers want to make in the kernel.

  • He is like a funnel between the contributors and "the king" Linus.

  • The way that we work is... You can talk all day about a great idea-

  • -or a solution to a problem, or something that-

  • -you think is an interesting feature for Linux to have but you gotta-

  • -show us something concrete. Show me a piece of code that does that.

  • Something that's tangible that I can test myself so I can try it out and I can-

  • -think about what it is. Instead of just talking abstractly about a topic all day.

  • Alan Cox, a "renaissance hacker" is the closest collaborator to Linus.

  • His right hand man.

  • "What is Alan doing... The other side of the story"

  • To me code has more in common with i.e. poetry or some kinds of writing.

  • The beauty of it is in the structure, in putting ideas across one at a time-

  • -in a clear way.

  • So a good piece of code you read without comments and it's immediately-

  • -obvious why it's been written, how it's elegant. So you're looking for code-

  • -which is both clean and elegant. But also doesn't rely on clever programming tricks,-

  • -doesn't make assumptions which may not be true in the future.

  • Because the last thing we want to do is having much code in the Linux kernel-

  • -which requires large amounts of effort to keep it working.

  • We want code which will just continue to work, and work forever.

  • Having led the Linux project for five years in Helsinki-

  • -Linus was recruited to Silicon Valley, California.

  • He wanted to see the other side of the world, the world of commerce,-

  • -not just the academic side.

  • "Edward Helmore talks to Linus Torvalds, Silicon Valley's brightest new star"

  • You're quite an un-orthodox figure in the Silicon Valley world.

  • What do they make of you there?

  • You're not taking their crazy commercial part, if you like.

  • "TRANSMETA"

  • Linus started to work for a company called "Transmeta"-

  • A little Linux company, but a mysterious business-

  • -that didn't want to tell, for many years, what it was up to.

  • And paradoxically a closed source code company.

  • The deal was that Linus could still concentrate on developing Linux.

  • I have been forced into trying to be a poster boy for Linux-

  • -and actually the whole open source community at large,-

  • -even though I wasn't even the person who started open source.

  • There's no single person that represents the whole story-

  • -and there's no single starting point. I mean, it's like the bamboo:

  • You don't know where it starts or where it ends.

  • I don't think that this movement is actually new at all.

  • It's been around for a long time.

  • Even in the 1970's, the whole attitude that we had around UNIX-

  • -even though technically it wasn't open source, it wasn't free,-

  • -because you did need to go get this license from AT&T.

  • Since that was not an issue generally, you could share things freely.

  • When you run a program, typically you run the executable form-

  • -which is a series of numbers and nobody can make any sense of them.

  • Only a computer can understand them. That's what they're for.

  • Those numbers are the form of a program that the computer can understand.

  • For humans to figure out what they mean is very hard. When we write software-

  • -we write it as source code, and it looks sort of like algebra. That's the form-

  • -that you can understand if you're a programmer.

  • To help you figure out there are usually lots and lots of comments-

  • -which are explanations that are put into the source code to help other people-

  • -figure out why the program is written the way it is.

  • If you get just the executables, which is what Microsoft will probably give you-

  • -even if you had the freedom to make changes you could never figure out-

  • -what changes to make. It's too hard!

  • For the freedom to change the software to be practical, and usable,-

  • -you gotta have the source code.

  • If you really look at the project... As I said, Linus developed the kernel-

  • -but I think that the most interesting part here is really-

  • -Richard Stallman began the movement.

  • Have you heard of Richard Stallman?

  • He wanted everyone to have the rights to use the software, to copy the software-

  • -without breaking any laws. To make changes, distribute them,-

  • -enhance the software. He wanted to give people rights!

  • When he decided to overthrow corrupt American capitalism in the IT industry-

  • -he quit his job and continued coding.

  • Join us now and share the software

  • MIT, Camebridge, Massachusetts

  • You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free

  • I tend to think of things in terms of justice, freedom and ethics.

  • I announced the idea in November 1983-

  • -but it was in Januari 1984 that I quit my job at MIT-

  • -to start developing a free operating system-

  • -to which I gave the name "GNU".

  • This is "GNU General Public License" and of course the kernel is under GPL...

  • "Free software", I should explain, refers to freedom, not price.

  • It's unfortunate that the word "free", in english, is ambiguous-

  • -it has a number of different meanings.

  • One of them means "zero price", but another meaning is "freedom".

  • So think of "free speech", not "free beer".

  • There's a similarity between the folk process where a poem-

  • -or a song or a story can get refined and reshaped-

  • -by one teller or singer after another-

  • -and the way free software gets improved.

  • You'll often find cases where a free program is being developed now by-

  • -a group of people who include none of the original developers.

  • In 1991 we had almost finished the GNU system.

  • Our goal was to make an OS, like UNIX, but entirely free software.

  • This complete operating system required many different components-

  • By 1991 we had almost all of those components.

  • Many of them we had written, and many others we had found-

  • -somebody else had written it for his own purposes but it did the job.

  • And so we pressed it into service as a part of GNU.

  • One major component was still missing: the component called the "kernel".

  • So it was very useful that Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel.

  • At that point, combining his kernel, Linux, with the larger GNU system-

  • -produced a complete runnable system that-

  • -you could actually put onto your PC and run.

  • So once Linux was developed the GNU system in effect was completed!

  • It began to catch on in popularity, but at the same time-

  • -an unfortunate thing happened. The people who were using-

  • -the GNU system didn't realize it was the GNU system.

  • So they began calling the whole combination "Linux"-

  • -and that confusion spread.

  • As a result, it's very hard for us in the GNU project-

  • -to call the user's attention to the ethical and political issues.

  • Hoarders can get piles of money

  • That is true, hackers, that is true

  • But they cannot help their neighbor

  • That's not good, hackers, that's not good

  • Most computer science in the USA comes traditionally from military background-

  • -and defense spending.

  • Perhaps it isn't any more quirky that nowadays the "free software" movement-

  • -finds room both for Richard Stallman and libertarian ideals.

  • Many saw free software also as a new way of making money-

  • -and needed a less radical concept.

  • Enter: open source.

  • "I want you to be an open source developer"

  • We looked at the history of advocacy in what at the time was-

  • -still mostly called the "free software" movement and we concluded-

  • -that it hadn't worked!

  • That in fact the rhetoric and the tactics used by Richard Stallman and the-

  • -Free Software Foundation had left us worse off than we were when we started.

  • The term "open source" doesn't really imply the political issues-

  • -like it used to and the "free software" term still does.

  • There's now a second movement, the "open source" movement-

  • -where they consider only the practical benefits.

  • They refuse, and I mean that literally... they carefully avoid-

  • -the issues of principle, freedom, ethics and making a good society to live in.

  • That kind of language is implicitly threatening to people-

  • -whose day-to-day concerns are: "how do I increase my shareholder value?",-

  • -"how do I keep control over my business?"

  • How do I address my actual down-to-earth problems?

  • When you walk into their offices and say "you should use all open source for your-

  • -business because sharing is good and hoarding is evil" - it doesn't work!

  • I am not against business. I don't believe in abolishing business.

  • I do business myself. But I believe business should not dominate all of life.

  • The rules of society should not be chosen primarily to please business.

  • Early in 1998 the majority usage in the community went from "free software"-

  • -to "open source" in six weeks flat. In the late spring or early summer of 1998.

  • That told me that there had been huge pent-up demand in the community-

  • -for a way of explaining what we were doing that was more effective.

  • The whole attitude in the trade press and the investor community-

  • -completely turned around!

  • The same people who had spent years sneering dismissively at "free software"-

  • -and talking about sandal-wearing freaks with long hair...

  • Those very same people within a year were falling all over themselves to write-

  • -laudatory articles about the wonders of open source and peer review.

  • -and this is really funny because it was the same software-

  • -and in most cases the same people!

  • "Robin Hood of the nerds"

  • "Martin Luther, meet Linus Torvalds"

  • Linux happened without the help of people with deep pockets-

  • -or even despite the help.

  • How can we keep from destroying the magic by pouring all this money into Linux?

  • When Linux started to become commercialized-

  • -people said: "oh well, we'd like to keep it as our own little project".

  • "Nobody should be making any money off it".

  • Well, in the real world people make money off things. The US is a capitalistic-

  • -society and Europe is a capitalistic society.

  • In order for companies to start using Linux-

  • -they wanna have somebody sitting there, who can give them support,-

  • -who can sell them the hardware.

  • And these people who sell this hardware and support are going to make money.

  • Not everyone of us is a hacker.

  • Actually, very few of us would take the effort to download Linux from the net.

  • Even fewer will tackle with the code itself in order to improve it.

  • Though, Linux was hard to use, customers valued strongly-

  • -its reliability and open source code.

  • There was an opportunity for companies with new visions.

  • "Red Hat"

  • For Red Hat, it wasn't important that we ship a better-

  • -operating system than Microsoft's or Sun Microsystems'-

  • It becomes really important that we ship an operating system-

  • -that solves a problem for our customers that they cannot solve-

  • -using the traditional proprietary "binary only" software.

  • We were recognizing what we were doing was we were-

  • -building technology and then giving it away!

  • So we said: "Well, how do you make money doing this?"

  • Of course, we would go to California, to Silicon Valley, and everyone said:

  • "Well, you cannot make money in the software business-

  • -by giving your technology away".

  • We would come back and talk to our customers and we realized the only thing-

  • -that kept our customers loyal was that we did give away our technology.

  • For the very first time they had control over the technology they're using.

  • The real value in most software products is the active maintainence down the line-

  • -the continuing support relationship between the vendor and you.

  • That's what gives software fundamentally the characteristics of-

  • -the service industry rather than the manufacturing industry.

  • Linux is flourishing in the Internet server appliance area.

  • But because there has not been an easy-to-use software for home users-

  • -it has only a small margin of the desktop market.

  • The GNOME project, with its graphical interface tries to fill that gap.

  • But hacker elitism still seems to follow Linux.

  • Do you see who's here? It's a penguin!

  • -It's Tux, actually... -Hi, Tux!

  • When Linus Torvalds makes millionaires and billionaires-

  • Bill Gates' hair turns grey...

  • Microsoft has a very traditional model:

  • They make closed source code, they put it on a CD, they sell that.

  • They take on all the burden of development themselves.

  • Everything goes back through them.

  • Once you're in that business it's very hard to change your culture.

  • It's very hard to change your business to one where you cooperate.

  • It's easier to make money off closed source products-

  • -if you don't need, or you have the huge market share.

  • So, for example, Microsoft does not have a huge incentive-

  • -to open source their code right now.

  • And it would probably cut into their profits, so I don't think-

  • -they're gonna do it, or at least not willingly.

  • There's algorithms that you may in fact want to keep proprietary.

  • For example, I know of certain compression algorithms that companies-

  • -have put a lot of work into. For things like streaming media.

  • And they don't want people to know how they do that -

  • -because it's exactly how they do that that's the value of the product.

  • Fighting between Linus, who's the leader of Linux, and-

  • -Bill Gates who's the leader of Microsoft.

  • It becomes really personal.

  • Next, for our bizarre question: "Whose lips are these?"

  • As an answer: Bill Gates' lips telling another lie...

  • The acceptance of Linux has been helped enormously by the fact-

  • -that people have known that Linux exists through the news.

  • The "David versus Goliath" story helped there, but I don't think it's particularly true.

  • "Microsoft's Ballmer claims Linux is communism"

  • -You are a socialist...?

  • -That's one of the labels that people put on me.

  • -Is that true?

  • It's not a secret that I was a left wing radical in the late 1960's.

  • Students' UN organization was behind most demonstrations.

  • My personal belief system is more one of personal honour.

  • I don't care what anybody else does... I want to do what I feel is right.

  • Linus keeps a very strict distance to politics.

  • I think he suffered slightly in his earliest childhood-

  • -as his father was so active politically.

  • It is also about having a social conscience-

  • -and if you call that socialism then, yeah, I guess I'm socialist...

  • He is radical within a very restricted area, where he sets the limits himself.

  • He is very reluctant to take part in fuzzy political discourse-

  • -and there's the difference between the pragmatist-

  • -who wants to work with concrete stuff and not let the steam-

  • -go out through his ears, like we used to do in the 1960's.

  • This is a community. You can take but you must give back!

  • I am very pleased to announce to you today-

  • -the winner of this year's IDG/Linus Torvalds award is: Debian.

  • It's good that the Linux community has been fairly positive towards new things,-

  • -including the commercial aspects.

  • Hi, I'm from Brazil, and I'd like to know what can we do-

  • -to bring you to Brazil in May next year?

  • -Hey, are you coming to the VA party wednesday night?

  • -I will almost certainly be there, yes. But I need to go now...

  • -I'm hearing that you're going shooting? -You come with us, man!

  • -Nooo...

  • A lot of communities worry that these big enterprises, these big commercial vendors-

  • -are not going to be able to give back to the community.

  • The thing is that people expect other people to be nice and take care of things-

  • -and I don't think that is true, and I don't think that it should be true-

  • -and I think that the power of Linux is that even if nobody else helps you-

  • -an inch of the way, you still have your own copy of Linux-

  • -and you still have your own power to do whatever you want...

  • I want to avoid the politics of Linux.

  • I want to be somebody that everybody agrees is a nice guy and he doesn't bite!

  • -One last question? -Sure!

  • -I'm from India.

  • Do you get a lot of developers from India contributing to the kernel?

  • Not that many.

  • What is the message that you would like to give them so that you get more of them.

  • I think one of the problems is just infrastructure.

  • They don't even necessarily have Internet access, or have very slow access.

  • I think that people are maybe not used to do this collaboration on the Internet.

  • They're kind of nervous, right?

  • Any message you wanna give them to motivate them to get more developers?

  • I don't know what the issues are in India, but there are going to be issues.

  • Like local issues that Indians want to be able to do things-

  • -that the American continent doesn't care about at all.

  • And I think that's really motivational when somebody says:

  • "Hey, I can solve this! I can make my own version of Linux-

  • -and it will be better for me as an Indian or whatever person".

  • And that's how you should be motivated, and whatever I say you should not care!

  • Thank you very much!

  • -You come down to India next time... -I will try to...

  • Do you want to take a picture for a Dutch magazine?

  • Are you planning on coming to the Netherlands?

  • The real value of Linux may be some- where else than knocking Microsoft out.

  • Linux was designed to run on a cheap hardware and to solve common problems.

  • If you are poor it is a real alternative, free of charge.

  • The Linux project started in Europe and the United States.

  • But now, free software allows it to find ever more-

  • -new programmers from new sources-

  • -from regions where computing is still in its infancy.

  • Beijing, China

  • China is behind the developed countries in the IT industry.

  • The gap is big and we try to catch up as fast we can.

  • During this we have to borrow from other countries' experiences.

  • We put a great importance on the operating system.

  • We did some development work based on UNIX-

  • Due to tight market control we were not able to succeed.

  • Linux provides us with a very good opportunity

  • -and a base to learn from advanced technology.

  • "The Chinese Red Army delighted with Linux"

  • I think that this is the greatest transfer of wealth we may have ever seen-

  • -between the industrialized rich north, and put Europe and-

  • -the United States together in that, and the third world!

  • It's the open source.

  • I think this is important to many people.

  • I like philosophy, and I like to analyze matters from a philosophic perspective.

  • The open source is in accordance with the spirit of science-

  • -the free and unrestricted access to information.

  • Nothing should be hidden. That's my first impression of Linux.

  • The spirit could be expanded to other fields.

  • I never feel that this only applies in the computer field.

  • You have one of the most privileged classes in capitalism: programmers!

  • They can make so much money from working as programmers-

  • -that they have the time to devote to their own hobbies.

  • Programmers like Alan Cox, they could name their price!

  • Here are these people who are at the top of the heap, and through-

  • -the structure of transfer of intellectual property they've come up with,-

  • -they're transferring that wealth.

  • It is socialism in action, even if the libertarians-

  • -are horrified whenever that is mentioned.

  • Open source projects have been compared to the way science is created.

  • Science in itself doesn't make money-

  • The wealth comes as the result of applications.

  • For the open source hackers developing Linux-

  • -has traditionally been a science- like voluntary project. A hobby.

  • Eventually, the best Linux hackers were enlisted.

  • In 1999, during the dot-com boom, some of the Linux companies went public.

  • Wall Street announced record- breaking value for Linux stock.

  • Of course it didn't last, but for a period of time-

  • -some Linux hackers were filthy rich - on paper.

  • Just about everyone who was a core developer before-

  • -all this whoopla about people making money doing Linux-

  • -have kept to their values in taking these jobs.

  • Most of the ones I keep in contact with, have a very crucial position and are-

  • -pretty much doing all of the Linux work they were doing before they had the job-

  • -with the same levels of freedom, as well. I still got changes from people every day-

  • -I still submitted them to Linus, the same way I always did before the IPO.

  • Some of us are driving nicer cars than beforehand. That's the only difference.

  • Maybe we're eating a little bit more sushi.

  • There are some people who got lucky, joined the right company at the right time.

  • Managed to participate in the IPO lottery and there are some people who-

  • -got millions of dollars, and there are some people who got billions of dollars!

  • Did those people actually contribute more to the company than those other people?

  • In some cases they just happened to contribute the right-

  • -amount of investment money at the right time.

  • I think that's a generic problem that's not unique to the open source community.

  • I don't know if we actually have a good solution for that.

  • Part of what I like about Silicon Valley is just that it's so dynamic,-

  • -and you can do anything here.

  • And even the money-grabbing approach. Even if it's slightly tasteless-

  • -especially when you come from Europe, it's a really good motivational factor.

  • It's a really good way of getting things done.

  • Has it changed me? I assume so.

  • I'm not the same person I was when I moved-

  • -but I don't think it's made me all that more money-conscious than I used to be.

  • 2001 - Imagined by Stanley Kubrick.

  • In the most ambitious and grotesque PR stunt in history-

  • -suicide hijackers blitz America with far-reaching consequences.

  • IT recession affects also open source.

  • No longer does Linus have to act in public all the time as an enlightened-

  • -philosopher ruler, harassed by the media. With the coolness of Linux still intact-

  • -the phenomenon disappears into gadgets.

  • Invisible pieces of technology for households and entertainment industry.

  • Gradually, many of us turn into Linux users when the code infiltrates-

  • -our clocks, toasters and mobile phones.

  • As for bigger ideals, it could be one of the greatest missed opportunities of our times-

  • -if free software liberated nothing but code.

  • There's no question that development of technology-

  • -is just going to make Linux obsolete at some point.

  • The question is just: "How long will it take?"

  • Will it be in 5 years, or 15 years or will it be 50 years?

  • I think one of the powers of open source is that in 50 years-

  • -the next operating system that's the best at the time-

  • -will be able to take advantage of the source base that Linux had.

  • The source code itself is going to be the memory of Linux-

  • -and people can always use that as a kind of blueprint.

  • But there's more in that. There's also the intangible issues-

  • -about why things were designed a certain way.

  • I think those are out there even if I weren't out there...

  • The Code - Story of Linux ©2001

Let me make an analogy between programs and recipes.

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