Linus Torvalds interview on CNN

[Jamon Camisso]

Jason Shein wrote:
> Good to see more exposure in the mainstream media.
> 
> http://edition.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/05/18/global.office.linustorvalds/

Yes a nice read to star my day. One typical problem with this type of 
mainstream article though, the interviewer seems hopelessly uninformed.

"KLS: Over the years, Linux has spawned other open technologies and even 
an open source spirit or open source philosophy. It has engendered stuff 
like Wikipedia, the online open source encyclopedia or even, some could 
argue, citizen journalism. What are your thoughts about that?

LT: We shouldn't give credit to Linux per se. There were open source 
projects and free software before Linux was there. Linux in many ways is 
one of the more visible and one of the bigger technical projects in this 
area and it changed how people looked at it because Linux took both the 
practical and ideological approach. At the same time I don't think this 
whole "openness" notion is new..."

Not one mention of FSF/GNU. Strange that :) Got to hand it to Linus for 
being rather humble throughout, especially at the end. Whether that was 
an editorial choice or not makes little difference, just good to have 
that part at the end in a position that even casual readers will check. 
  So many people in various development (distros, projects, etc.) could 
take a few lessons from Linus, perhaps step back and make their projects 
less about ego and more about their project.

What are people's thoughts on open source vs. free software? Can such a 
distinction exist? Which of the two is the better term, ideologically 
and/or practically? Considering we all pretty much use both GNU and 
Linux, some credit deserves to be sent Stallman's way doesn't it? THen 
again, perhaps we wouldn't be using GNU were it not for Linux.

Linus' penguin definitely beats Stallman's Yak or whatever it is in 
terms of cuddly factor...

Jamon

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml