How Linus Torvalds made software development freer

“I make free software because I think this is the only right way to develop”



Some consider Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system and the Git repository, to be just a lucky man. To some, he, on the contrary, seems to be a purposeful enthusiast of his work. However, no one will argue with the fact that thanks to Torvalds' exceptional talent, an operating system has emerged that has spread throughout the world.

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Moreover, fundamentally important for its creator was the free use and free editing of the OS source code. A huge opensource-community has formed around Linux, thanks to which the system is developing to this day: new assemblies and new operating systems based on the Linux kernel constantly appear.

The distribution of Linux was developed at an early stage. Linux is distributed freely, while it can not be put up for sale. If the user made any changes or improvements to the system, he should have made them publicly available in the form of source codes.

Linus wrote his OS, relying on a variety of tools freely distributed on the Internet. The most important of these was the GCC compiler, the copyright of which was specified in the General Public License. Subsequently, the entire Linux operating system was registered under the GPL license.

"Game" in Linux

Linus Torvalds did not think about fame, and did not assume that the story of Linux would go so far. He was fond of computers and programming from school years and continued to do what he loved, while studying at the University of Helsinki. He himself often points out that programming needs to be done with pleasure. Therefore, just like in childhood, he simply "played" in the development of Linux. Driven first by excitement, and later by positive reviews, Torvalds at one point discovered that he had created an operating system.





Linux 0.01



"No one really creates great code the first time, except for me, but I'm such a one."



Gradually, other developers have become “playing” in Linux along with its creator. Having opened all the maps and laid out the source code of his brainchild in open access, Torvalds to some extent risked losing the status of a leading developer in the project. However, he, apparently, guessed that his professional level was significantly higher than most developers. In addition, not everyone can work a lot, efficiently and at the same time for free. And Linus Torvalds just had such a “unique” ability.



And the following quote illustrates the term “entertainment” in Torvalds’s view:

So, most of you are likely to suffer unbearably from boredom at Christmas, and here you have the perfect entertainment. Test the 2.6.15-rc7. All shops will be closed, and in fact there will be no better occupation between eating food.

In general, before Linus married his student, programming was almost the only occupation he did between “eating food”. After his marriage in 1996, Torvalds got a job at a Californian startup Transmeta, which developed energy efficient CPUs. But nevertheless, he remained the leading developer of Linux and at the same time continued to enjoy.







And in 2003, he left the company to focus entirely on developing his OS. Care was made possible thanks to the Linux Foundation, a newly formed public organization (at the time it was called Open Source Development Labs), which provided Torvalds with medical insurance and salary.

Unexpected success

The Linux community has become a kind of self-regulating organism that no one managed to centrally control. Accordingly, there was no point in arranging a power struggle in the project. However, Torvalds is still credited with informal leadership. According to the well-known quotation, directing programmers is like feeding a herd of cats. Perhaps Linus was able to find a balance between the general direction of development of the project and at the same time did not stop the developers from walking alone. Moreover, within the framework of this project, any participant can conduct their own development based on the Linux kernel, without disturbing anyone.



You can also recall that like attracts like: being an adequate and self-critical professional without an overstated ČSV, Torvalds naturally “pulled” to him those who had similar qualities. At some point, Linux has become the most successful opensource project. And as you know, the team most often achieves serious success, when its members are looking approximately in one direction.



Such results could not leave indifferent commercial manufacturers of operating systems ... and just envious people left out. However, Linus Torvalds did not seek to cross the road or make someone jealous. Linux began to spread outside the community because it was a really high-quality product. Especially great opportunities opened up before her when, in the spring of 1992, hacker Orest Zbrowski successfully adapted the X Window for Linux. Thus, Linux has a graphical interface.

Git

In addition to developing operating systems, Torvalds was not interested in anything. Although this topic includes many aspects that you can do all your life. The most boring areas of Linus considered the development of version control systems and work with databases. However, ironically, in 2005 he was forced to create his own source code management system.



In 2005, Torvalds released the Linux 2.6.12-rc2 release and said that he would not continue to develop the operating system until there was a replacement for the BitKeeper repository that the Linux community used until 2005. BitKeeper had to be abandoned due to disagreements with its developers regarding its free use in opensource development. And the other source control systems Toralds were totally disliked.



"As a result, I decided that in two weeks I could write something better, and I was not mistaken."



Torvalds has created a two-week distributed Git source control system. He often said that he could not tolerate centralized repositories like SVN. When creating Git, Linus clearly understood what he needed: decentralization, the possibility of independent offline development, convenience and reliability when branching and merging. Moreover, he created a source control system specifically for the needs of Linux kernel developers.







But Git was prepared for a "great" fate, which Torvalds, again, did not expect. The repository has become popular outside the Linux community. Git was used by developers of such products as KVM, Qt, Drupal, Puppet, Wine.

Geek with character

In the wake of Git's popularity, Linus even spoke at Google in 2007. After reading the report, we can conclude that Torvalds was concerned about himself and the current situation with a fair amount of irony and self-criticism:

I have to warn you slightly that I am not a very good speaker, partly because I don’t like to speak, and partly because over the past few years, everyone just wanted me to talk about the future foggy Linux in the next century, and I’ve geek and prefer to talk about technology.

Even in childhood, Linus Torvalds was a shy and unsociable man. At school, he was considered a typical "nerd", which is quite consistent with his appearance (puny and short) and hobbies. He considered himself "ugly" - including, because of the big nose.



In his youth, he continued to suffer from all sorts of complexes associated with socialization. True, he suffered exclusively in his free time from programming - that is, quite rarely.



His failures in society were more than offset by successes in computer science, where Torvalds enjoyed his own “omnipotence”. But such contradictions are characteristic of prominent people and are compensated with age. In this case, it can be traced what imprint it left on his style of communication.

You may disagree with me as much as you like, but during this report, everyone who disagrees with me is, by definition, stupid freaks. Remember this! You will be free to do and think whatever you want when I finish the report. And now I’m telling my one and only correct opinion, so CVS users, if you really love him so much, get out of my sight. You need to go to the mental hospital or somewhere else.

The theme in which Torvalds feels confident becomes a field for improvisation, self-irony, coquetry and other forms of flirting with the public.

I started the project, developed the architecture and the starting code, for the past year and a half it has been supported by a much more glorious guy, the Japanese Junio ​​Hamano, and it was he who made Git more accessible to mere mortals. Early versions of Git did require a certain amount of brain power mental points. Since then, it has become much easier.



In general, this is my usual approach - everyone else is doing everything possible, and I myself can just sit and sip PinaColada.

Not alien to Linus Torvalds and such qualities as outright frankness, bordering on demonstrative impropriety. This illustrates the history of cooperation with NVidia in 2012.



One of the university students asked the creator of Linux to comment on the relationship of the opensource community with one of the world's largest developers of graphics accelerators and processors, NVidia.



Linus Torvalds said that NVidia is one of the worst companies with which he had to deal. According to him, representatives of NVidia have absolutely no desire to cooperate with the Linux development community and continues to keep the code of their graphics drivers for Linux closed.



Concluding his answer, Linus Torvalds summed up the above with regard to NVidia, made an indecent hand gesture to the camera and said : “NVidia, fuck you!”







The values ​​that defended (maybe sometimes too demonstratively) Linus Torvalds, changed the idea of ​​what can be the opensource-community. His example inspired, and still continues to inspire, "to the exploits" of other developers.



On April 20, 2012, Linus Torvalds (together with Japanese physician Xingyei Yamanaka) won the Millennium Technology Award (Finland).



In 2014, Linus Torvalds received the Computer Pioneer award from the IEEE Computer Society.