Nikolai Bezroukov. Portraits of Open Source Pioneers

For readers with high sensitivity to grammar errors access to this page is not recommended :-)

Softpanorama Linus Torvalds' Interviews Collection (2004)
(preserving Linus Torvalds interviews for humanity ;-)

Linux creator opens up in interview By Dean Takahashi

Knight Ridder News Service

Linus Torvalds is the creator of the Linux operating system, the open source version of Unix that is sweeping through the software world in a direct challenge to Microsoft.

He spoke candidly with San Jose Mercury News staff writer Dean Takahashi about the SCO Group vs. IBM lawsuit (where Big Blue is accused of illegally putting Unix code into Linux), about Microsoft and open source development.

He also shed light on his decision to leave chipmaker Transmeta for a Linux corporate software consortium, the Open Source Development Lab. Here is an edited transcript:

Q. The SCO Group has sued IBM for illegally contributing Unix code to Linux. Do you believe this episode reveals any vulnerabilities in the open source movement?

A. Not really. Open source software is very visible. That means it's very easy to see if there is something wrong. That is a good thing. The whole point is that, with the kind of transparency you get with open source, people are a lot less likely to ever have intellectual property issues. I compare it to stealing a car. Do you steal a car in the bright daylight with a lot of people around? Or do you steal a car, go for a joy ride at 4 a.m. when there aren't a lot of people around. With open source, there is a lot of daylight. A lot of people looking at the code. You don't really go around and steal things.

Q. They say Linux's origins are murky.

A. There has been a lot of rumor. It's more of an allegation. Quite the reverse. If you look at murky, it's SCO's allegations that are murky. With Linux code, you can see how it's been developed. You can see who applied patches. You can see when they got applied. It's all in the open. The original code was all written by me. It took almost a year before there was a major contribution from people outside. The only part that has been irritating about the lawsuit is they make it personal. They are showing my e-mails to the press. They called my approach cavalier because I made a joke in an e-mail. OK. Tough. If they can't take a joke, that's their problem.

Q. Does it surprise you that Linux is a pawn in a battle between big companies?

A. No. I'm not surprised about lawsuits per se. When there is enough money involved, lawsuits are inevitable. It's not a pawn that somebody takes over. I find it interesting that people have used it in different ways that I didn't envision and also that they're raising issues that I don't care about.

Q. Do you worry now that, regardless of who wins the lawsuit, that it will do some damage to the adoption of Linux?

A. What I worry most about is these things tend to drag out. If somebody were to show this is what a judge thinks about this case, I'm fairly confident that Linux is OK.

Q. Can you tell us how Linux evolves?

A. It all boils down to hundreds of different groups. A group can be a huge company that has an agenda. Or it can mean one person at a university working on a research project. They have their own thing they want to fix. All of these people make their modifications, and not all of them are accepted. I see it as a kind of ecosystem. You have survival of the fittest. It's not really centralized. I am at the center, but I don't direct any teams. All these people are trying to pull me in different directions. Q. Does this controlled chaos work against Microsoft?

A. I t ultimately is the only way to do software.

Q. Microsoft's reaction to Linux?

A. They are not in trouble. They are struggling to deal with Linux partly because Linux is undermining them the same way they undercut their competition. They never had a competitor like themselves. Then comes somebody who undercuts them and they start acting exactly how all of their competitors acted. If you look at how Unix vendors acted toward Microsoft, they were belittling Microsoft. Microsoft is on the receiving end of this undercutting.

Q. You have left Transmeta (the Santa Clara maker of low-power microprocessors) where you worked for six years. Now you have joined the Open Source Development Lab (which is creating a version of Linux for corporations). Can you explain why you took the leave of absence?

A. For the last six months I was spending a lot of time working on the next 2.6 release of Linux. Transmeta has been very good to me. This time I felt I'd have a hard time bouncing back to the Transmeta work. I was feeling more guilty about that. The OSDL thing came along. It was a neutral place. I need to concentrate on Linux. Why not let somebody pay me for that? I can't go to a Linux vendor because I would no longer be seen as neutral. What made it easier to leave now was that Transmeta seems to have stabilized lately. That made it easier and I didn't feel like I was a rat leaving a sinking ship. Because the Transmeta dream didn't work out, it has less resources to do fundamental research. Five or six years ago we did stuff at Transmeta that universities didn't do. That made Transmeta a very special place.

Q. You go after one monopoly at a time?

A. (Laughs). I never saw Intel as a monopoly. It has competition. To me personally, Intel has always had a healthier position. A lot of people thought, yeah, he's always going after the big guys.

That wasn't the point of being at Transmeta. I want to do something that is relevant, and if it is relevant there is always somebody else out there.

© Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune.