'People want to hear about the one big idea that changes the world, but that's not how the world works. It's not about visionary ideas; it's about lots of good ideas which do not seem world-changing at the time, but which turn out to be great after lots of sweat and work have been applied.'<blockquote>'A member of the audience asked Linus to describe his single most memorable moment from the last 20 years. Linus responded that he didn't really have one; the kernel is the result of lots of small ideas contributed by lots of people over a long time. There has been no big "ah ha!" moment. He went on to describe a pet peeve of his with regard to the technology industry: [Linus Torvalds] there is a great deal of talk about "innovation" and "vision." People want to hear about the one big idea that changes the world, but that's not how the world works. It's not about visionary ideas; it's about lots of good ideas which do not seem world-changing at the time, but which turn out to be great after lots of sweat and work have been applied.
He did acknowledge that there have been some interesting moments, though, going back to nearly 20 years ago when Linux went from a personal project to something where he no longer knew all of the people who were involved in it. At that point, he realized, Linux wasn't just his toy anymore. There have been exciting developments; the day Oracle announced that it would support Linux was one of those. But what it really comes down to is persistence and hard work by thousands of people.
Another person asked whether the increasing success of web applications would mean the end of Linux. Linus responded that the move toward the browser has, instead, been helpful to Linux. There used to be a whole lot of specialized, Windows-only applications for tasks like dealing with banks; those are now all gone. When applications run in the browser, the details of the underlying operating system don't matter, at which point it comes down to technology, licensing, and price - all of which are areas in which Linux excels.
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What is really hard, though, is the problem of mixing the agendas of thousands of developers and hundreds of companies. That leads to occasional big disagreements over features and which code to merge. If Linus loses sleep, it tends to be over people and politics, not technical issues; the interactions between people can sometimes frustrate him. We usually solve these problems too, but the solution can involve bad blood for months at a time.
The linux-kernel mailing list, Linus said, is somewhat famous for its outspoken nature; it is seen as a barrier to participation sometimes. But it's important to be able to clear the air; people have to be able to be honest and let others know what they are thinking. If you try to be subtle on the net, people don't get it; that can lead to developers putting years of work into features that others simply hate. In the long run, Linus said, it can be much healthier to say "hell no" at the outset and be sure that people understand. Of course, that only works if we can then admit it when it turns out that we were wrong.'
- Jonathan Corbet,
A conversation with Linus at LinuxCon Japan, June 2, 2011</blockquote>