The e-mails of the celebrated programmer Linus Torvalds land like thunderbolts from on high onto public lists, full of invective, insults, and demeaning language. Torvalds has publicly posted thousands of scathing messages targeting programmers who submit what he deems flawed code to the Linux computer-operating-system kernel, which he brought to life more than twenty-five years ago and now administers as a collaborative, open-source project.
Today, the Linux kernel is famous, running the enormous computers of Google, PayPal, Amazon, and eBay, and the two billion mobile phones using the Android operating system.
Torvalds, though, retains final say over each precious line of code, just as he did when he first started working on the system as a graduate student at the University of Helsinki.
I am not, however, always proud of my inability to communicate well with others—this is a lifelong struggle for me. To anyone whose feelings I have hurt, I am deeply sorry. The foundation said that it supported his decision and has encouraged women to participate but that it has little control over how Torvalds runs the coding process.
Although it distributes its product for free, the Linux project has grown to resemble a blue-chip tech company. Of the eighty thousand fixes and improvements to Linux made in the past year, more than ninety per cent were produced by paid programmers, the foundation reported in ; Intel employees alone were responsible for thirteen per cent of them.
There are very few women among the most prolific contributors, though the foundation and researchers estimate that roughly ten per cent of all Linux coders are women. For a research project, Squire used e-mails from Torvalds to train a computer to recognize insults. Squire told me that she found few examples of gender bias. But he also created Git , a version control system that is extensively used in software development worldwide. Till , then proprietary service BitKeeper was used for Linux kernel development.
When Bitkeeper shut down its free service, Linus Torvalds created Git on his own because none of the other version control systems met his needs. Though Linus works full time on the Linux kernel, he hardly writes any code for it anymore. In fact, most of the code in the Linux kernel is by contributors from around the world.
He ensures that things go fine at each release with the help of kernel maintainers. He has been very vocal about it. A few years ago, Linus told that he found Debian difficult to install. He is known to be using Fedora on his main workstation. Linus Torvalds loves scuba diving. He even created Subsurface , a dive logging tool for scuba divers. Torvalds is known for using mild expletives on the Linux kernel mailing list.
This has been criticized by some in the industry. In , Torvalds took a break from Linux kernel development to improve his behavior. This was done just before he signed the controversial code of conduct for Linux kernel developers.
And when he does, he prefers to sit down and be interviewed by the host. This is his favorite way of doing a public talk. Except as quick email devices. Like most people in the tech industry during the pandemic, Torvalds works from home. But he's been doing it for decades, often in a bathrobe and at a standing desk equipped with a treadmill that runs at a constant 1 mph pace he calls it the "zombie-shuffling desk". With his trademark round, wire-frame glasses and side-parted salt-and-pepper hair, Torvalds' look hasn't changed much over the years.
His preference for casual, comfy attire extends even to public events. When Torvalds walked in, he wore flip-flops , shorts, and a T-shirt. Torvalds doesn't do much coding for Linux these days. He describes his role now as a "top-level technical lead. For nearly his entire career, Torvalds has devoted himself to Linux and open-source software. In addition to Linux, Torvalds created Git, the source-control system that's the basis for companies like GitHub and GitLab and which makes most of today's open-source projects possible.
He has three daughters, and his oldest is actually a software engineer, though she doesn't work on the Linux kernel "I'm not creating some Linux-kernel dynasty," he said. Despite being an introvert who doesn't "particularly like crowds of people," Torvalds said he loves "communicating and doing development in the open.
The contradiction — of an irascible coder who champions collaboration and owes his legacy to it — is at the heart of Linux's success, and its current predicament. Around the time of his leave in , Torvalds began going to therapy for the first time in his life and continued with it for a few months after his return. Jens Axboe, a Facebook software engineer and Linux developer, noted a "marked improvement," an assessment he attributes the fact that no email that Torvalds sends these days is "directly offensive in itself.
A few months of talking things over only does so much. But I hope and think that it perhaps made me slightly more aware and careful about my public emails. If it weren't for Torvalds' impatience and frustration, there might be no Linux. As a year-old computer-science student at the University of Helsinki in , Torvalds had to wait in line to use the school's computer system, which was limited to 16 users at a time.
The Unix operating system that powered the school computers, not to mention the hardware itself, was priced for business customers — way too expensive for a student to buy on their own — and serious programmers like Torvalds thought the PCs at the time weren't up to snuff for their needs.
So Torvalds bought a PC and started fiddling around, writing his own Unix-like code that enabled the machine to perform certain tasks. Soon he realized his homegrown tinkering had essentially produced the kernel, or core, of an operating system. He decided to keep going and to spread the word. I'd like to know what features most people would want," Torvalds wrote on an online bulletin board that August. The project attracted other programmers who submitted code to fix bugs they discovered or to enable new functions.
The Linux open-source community was born. As Linux gained popularity within tech circles, it went from an "odd toy operating system" to something used on web servers and in other real-world applications. By , more than people were independently contributing code to Linux. Torvalds, who was still a student, was overseeing the entire project.
The formidable challenges of the situation resulted in many of the practices and norms that still shape how Linux is managed today. The best developers were allotted certain parts of the kernel, essentially their own little fiefdoms, to oversee as "maintainers," reviewing all relevant code that developers submitted, providing quality control and feedback, and interacting with Torvalds. Developers say that they admire Torvalds for "technical vision" for code quality, for acting as a "catalyst" who helps the thousands of Linux engineers work together, and for being "helpful" in teaching other engineers.
The Linux developer Laura Abbott, the only woman on a white-male-dominated Linux Technical Advisory Board, said Torvalds is "not the warmest and fuzziest person out there," but he can "give good feedback when needed. Torvalds' "frank style of communication" and penchant for dropping F-bombs and arguing also fostered a free-for-all culture in which technical discussion often devolved into insult-laden spats. Neil Brown, a programmer who spent 15 years as a maintainer in the Linux community, said that "having a leader who demonstrates rare but real abusive outbursts" doesn't cause everyone in the group to behave similarly, but it emboldens those already prone to such conduct.
Torvalds is entering that middle-aged period of his life where he's suddenly one of the guys who gets honored in international awards ceremonies. And though he didn't say so, we got the sense that he wasn't into pontificating about the role of Linux in the internet.
I actually think that I'm a rather optimistic and happy person, it's just that I'm not a very positive person, if you see the difference. Soon, we're having a very interesting back-and-forth about people who are easily offended, euthanasia, and a favorite topic: the misdeeds of security industry and security researchers who become famous by uncovering the mistakes that people like Torvalds have missed.
It's why I compared them to the TSA -- even when you know there are morons that didn't finish high school and are stealing camera equipment and harassing people with ridiculous rules, you can't actually speak up against them because there's no recourse. As you might have guessed, he's a critic. It's either some very thinly veiled blackmail behind some 'best security practices' bullshit, or it's a carefully orchestrated PR event with the timing set so that they look important and interesting.
Then he slammed people like us in the tech press for eating it all up and turning everything into a "big circus. The thing is, if you ever have the pleasure of meeting Torvalds, he's not some raging maniac. He's mild-mannered and friendly.
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