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The EFYTimes has posted a great interview with Linux founder Linus Torvalds with questions pulled from the Linux community around a the world. Torvalds is never one to shy from bold statements, in fact in the interview he mentions that he like "making strong statements, because I find the discussion interesting."
But surprisingly this interview is fairly tame, with the notable exception of the discussion around the GPL v3 which Linus doesn't seem to like, saying "in the absence of the GPLv2, I could see myself using the GPLv3. But since I have a better choice, why should I?"
However, despite a shortage of fireworks, the interview is a nice peak behind the scenes of kernel development and the Linux community in general. Here's some brief excerpts of some more notable questions, though I would encourage readers to click through and read them in context as well.
>Q: Linux is free of cost and secure; yet, it has failed to become popular among desktop users. What are the reasons behind this? And what are your suggestions to make Linux more popular among the masses?
Linus: I think that's just mainly an issue of inertia. It's really hard to make people change their behavior, and you shouldn't expect it to happen overnight. Linux has made huge inroads over the years, and if I actually think back how things were ten years ago -- where we are today is just incredible. And I think that will continue, just because open source really ends up being good for everybody.
So I think a lot of it ends up being about education, in the sense of making people aware of the choices, and while that won't necessarily make people change on its own, it means that eventually they, at least, won't be afraid of Linux (because they've heard of it), and they might try it. And no, not everybody will be ready to switch, but I think we've seen that a lot of people do end up enjoying the advantages of open source.
>Q: Is having so many distros a good or bad idea? Choice is fine, but one does not need to be pampered with choices. Instead of so many man hours being spent in building hundreds of distros, wouldn't it be easier to get into the enterprise and take on the MS challenge if people could come together and support fewer distros (1 for each use maybe)? What's your view on that?
Linus: I think having multiple distros is an inevitable part of open source. And can it be confusing? Sure. Can it be inefficient? Yes. But I'd just like to compare it to politics: 'democracy' has all those confusing choices, and often none of the choices is necessarily what you 'really' want either, and sometimes you might feel like things would be smoother and more efficient if you didn't have to worry about the whole confusion of voting, different parties, coalitions, etc.
But in the end, choice may be inefficient, but it's also what keeps everybody involved at least 'somewhat' honest. We all probably wish our politicians were more honest than they are, and we all probably wish that the different distros sometimes made other choices than they do, but without that choice, we'd be worse off.
Q: ''Is this what computers have become,'' is the famous question Nokia has started asking in its N-series campaign. Is there any technology roadmap to make Linux rule the market of the next wave of computing devices, i.e., handhelds and mobiles?
Linus: I do think that if there is something that will displace the traditional desktop computer, it will be mobile computing. Whether it will be just laptops (still the same basic architecture, just mobile), or the smaller handheld that will take over, I don't know.
But it's definitely an area where Linux has the undeniable advantage of scaling across a much wider spectrum than any other operating system (i.e., Linux is on about 75 per cent of the top-500 supercomputers at the same time as it's being used by Nokia and Motorola in a cell phone form factor).
Q: The soon to be released Windows Longhorn is touted to be Microsoft's answer to the Linux threat, as Windows NT was for Novell in the 90s. Are there any improvements planned in Linux, keeping the technology advancements of Longhorn in mind?
Linus: I actually don't worry about MS at all. Their strength is in their marketing, and in the (obvious) market share they have. They've never been all that interesting from a 'technical' angle. And since all I personally care about is the technology, I don't end up being all that interested in what MS does.
Q: What do you think about Microsoft's efforts to sign cross-licensing deals with Linux distros like Novell, Xandros and Linspire? How is this going to affect the development of the kernel?
Linus: I don't really have a hugely strong opinion on it. Business is business, and I don't get involved with it; I worry about the technology. Yes, software patents are certainly worrisome, but I also tend to think that people just overreact a bit whenever MS is involved, and that some of the shrill reactions on the Internet have been a bit over the top.
Let's see what happens.
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