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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
You probably need to learn a bit more about VCS fundamentals if you think Subversion would've been fine.
I'm old enough to remember the SVN days (he'll, even the CVS and....dare I say it.... source safe days).
Git is fantastic. It's pretty universally uses because it's the best dvcs out there and it's free. It wipes the pants with the likes of mercurial.
In certain industries (such as gaming) there's still a strong hold by perforce but we can ignore that as it's proprietary and a bit specialised.
Anyway, as great as git is for making things easier and cleaner when dealing with distributed development, it by no means makes something impossible "possible" - it just makes it a hell of a lot easier.
The Linux kernel on the other hand enabled a lot of impossible things. Remember back in the day there wasn't anything free and open source in the operating system world, it was all proprietary and licensed. If you wanted to create your own operating system, you basically had no option but to spend a fortune either writing your own kernel or licensing someone else's (and the licensing part means you cannot distribute it for free).
The fact that the FSF has always wanted to write their own OS and never been able to achieve it without the Linux Kernel, in spite of them essentially writing "everything else" that makes up an operating system, shows just how nontrivial this is.
Do you think the existence of the Linux kernel might've had an effect on how Hurd was prioritized? Also, FreeBSD wasn't too far behind, chronologically.
I'm not saying Linux is unimportant (or even less important), but I think some folks here are pretty clueless about the significance of widespread DVCS adoption.
Pijul and similar patch-based systems are a lot better. They match my understanding of independent changes combining. git does the stupidest thing and just compares states - which means it has less information to automatically merge correctly
Well, I don't know what you mean, so possibly? I just briefly used SVN in a small team for about half a year and would never claim to be an expert. It's alive and kicking though, so regardless what you say I don't believe it's a complete clusterfuck and a world without git would be doomed.
Torvalds didn't create git because he was passionate about version control systems, he created it because the existing solutions were not adequate.
Git is a distributed version control system (DVCS) that facilitated a fundamental shift in how people collaborate on software projects in general. So, comparing it to SVN and downplaying the significance of Git suggests you've kind of missed the point.
Edit: with you on the other thing though - fuck Windows.
Geese, then take whatever else if working in a remote location without upstream access is important to you (note that I originally wrote "Subversion or whatever"). It's just version control, not rocket science.
I'm a git devotee myself, love it despite its growing redundancies. But I am able to imagine a world without it and don't tremble in fear. That's all I said here.
You're thinking in terms of a single dev using revision control, but the person you responded to was referring to the higher level aspects of software development that git facilitates. In other words, you've completely missed the point.
As for the Linux kernel, if it hadn't come along, we'd likely be living in FreeBSD-dominated world. Or, perhaps Hurd would've received more attention.
lol. I'm old enough to have worked with SVN (and many others) as part of my day job, and I promise you that 99% of git users use literally the same exact workflow as they did/would have under any other VCS. Git's fine, but it's neither revolutionary nor important from a user's perspective.
Can't two things both be important in different ways? Why must we always relativise?
git is why we can't have nice things
There's many better VCS, but everyone just goes on GitHub and uses git.
I dread ever having to touch it. The CLI is unintuitive, the snapshot system is confusing, and may God have mercy on your soul if you mix merging and rebasing
Mercurial or darcs?
Pijul, actually
darcs_rsWell, 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.
Statistically, the best properties to have are the ones just after jail. Everyone who passes go still has to pass them, while those who get sent to jail also have I pass them. The organge properties are the best, because the average dice roll is 7 and from jail that lands you right on them.
Healthy relationships have ridiculous hall-passes that share at least one person in common.
It's not cheating if it's consensual.
He’ll live long enough to end up on the wrong side of the polygamy rights fight. But I’d like to be surprised.
I imagine he will be an old and gray man and someone will ask him his opinion and it will probably be like
Polygamy: Mormons, etc. generally opposes womens rights.
Polyamory: Ideally places noone above another, elevates everyone to have the healthy connections such that noone is a "3rd wheel" or more disposable. Less about "polycules" recruiting new members, and more about individuals pairing with new partners, and existing partners (initially at least) gaining a metaphor. Mileage may vary and the point is everyone's needs are a bit different and shouldnt feel pressured to fit neatly into a nuclear box.
Just fyi.
Polyamory isn't cheating though.
Cheating is, by definition, sex with another person against your partner's will.
The fuck is that even supposed to mean
Five guys and five gals will be arguing they have a right to share DNA amongst each other and make a single kid, giving them all parental rights. Religious right will have their scheduled stroke. Most of the population won’t care. Internet trolls will be screaming how it’s a United Nations plan to depopulate the planet.
Or basically any legal recognition for polygamy.
…Is that even possible? I thought humans could only have exactly two parents biologically? If I didn’t misunderstand, I’m legit curious about this.
We’ve already reached two lesbians with their combined dna being carried by a surrogate (which has extra dna effects as the carrier). With further dna advancements it should be possible to mix up multiple parents dna.
Is it this one? I’m far from an expert but it seems like they used a different part of DNA from each woman, I doubt it’s possible to go beyond 3 parents with the same method.
He just seems frustrated. And I respect that. I’m a nerd who’s often frustrated as well.