Aug. 25, 1991: Kid From Helsinki Foments Linux Revolution, Aug 24, 2009

1991: Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old university student from Finland, writes a post to a user group asking for feedback on a little project he’s working on. He’s built a simple kernel for a Unix-like operating system that runs on an Intel 386 processor, and he wants to develop it further. The kernel eventually becomes Linux, which is released in 1994 and distributed over the internet for free.

Last week, Linux was tagged with a local NULL pointer flaw that could have led to a privilege escalation issue. Linux founder Linus Torvalds pushed a patch upstream quickly and now that patch is in the Linux 2.6.31 -rc6 milestone.

After a dispute with Linus Torvalds, the long time developer and Linux kernel maintainer Alan Cox has stopped development of the Linux TTY subsystem.

So, Microsoft submits 20000 lines of code to the Linux kernel, all licensed under the GPL. Microsoft, who considers Linux a great threat, and once called the GPL a "cancer". Opinions on this one are flying all around us, but what does Linus Torvalds, Linux' benevolent dictator, think about all this?

Linux project lead Linus Torvalds has said it is not easy to become a major contributor to the Linux kernel.

Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, says he's fed up with what he sees as a "security circus" surrounding software vulnerabilities and how they're hyped by security people.

10 days ago Linux creator Linus Torvalds gave an interview in which he talked about what he likes and doesn't like in a Linux distribution

I can certainly imagine the Linux kernel becoming obsolete--anything else would just be sad, really, in the big picture.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has labelled makers of the OpenBSD operating system a "bunch of masturbating monkeys", as part of a wider critique of what he said was self-centred behaviour in the IT security industry.

Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project that's among the best-known open-source threats to Windows, has words of praise for Microsoft's announcement last week that it would share some previously hard-to-get technology with open-source programmers.

Torvalds wasn't concerned about knowing who the contributors were working for: "I know they get paid for doing Linux work and as far as I am concerned, I interact with a person"

The Linux kernel has reached a level of maturity where it mostly goes unnoticed and acts like an "invisible magician in the background", according to Linus Torvalds.

“One of the things I did with Linux from very early on was when somebody sends me changes, they retain all copyright in those changes. I don’t have any more rights than anybody else,” he says. “Your rights when it comes to Linux are directly what you put into it.”

If Linus Torvalds stepped away from his position as coordinator of the Linux kernel, it is unlikely many people would notice, according to the man himself.

The Linux Foundation has posted the second half of its long and thorough interview with Linux founder Linus Torvalds, part of the Foundation's "open voices" podcast. While the first part of the interview focused on the Linux development community, this time Torvalds sounds off on everything from patents and innovation to the future of Linux.

Apple's much-touted new operating system, OS X Leopard, is in some ways worse than Windows Vista, says the founder of the Linux open source project, Linus Torvalds.

Microsoft's aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than "a marketing thing," according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.

The infrastructure and tools required to make Linux a green operating system are now in place, according to Linus Torvalds, who was in Melbourne this week attending Australia's largest Linux conference.

He doesn't own a mobile phone and he is proud of it. And he thinks virtualization is over-hyped. Find out what else we prize from Linux guru, Linus Torvalds.

Linux development is more like a social network built on trusted relationships and less like a democratic community of individuals dedicated to a single development process, according to Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today launched Open Voices, a podcast series featuring interviews with the industry's top Linux and open source leaders.

Linux development is more like a social network built on trusted relationships and less like a democratic community of individuals dedicated to a single development process, according to Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

The Linux creator said copyright owners would have to agree to licensing changes, and those who didn't would have to rewrite code.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3.

Linux cannot be stopped by Microsoft, according to Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, who has given his views on where Linux is going over the next year.

We really are pretty much all over the map. One of the fun things about Linux, and certainly the thing that has kept it interesting over almost two decades now, is how different people have different goals and the hardware keeps changing under us too.

Linus Torvalds was only 22 in 1991 when he decided to share with friends and colleagues the code of Linux, the new operating system he had created. The University of Helsinki computer science student couldn’t have imagined the revolution his decision was about to ignite.

The Linux guru seems to be trying very hard to make the latest Linux kernel update as boring as possible.

Linus Torvalds has launched a blistering attack on security programmers who object to adding the Smack application to the upcoming 2.6.24 Linux kernel.

He hates cellphones, but thinks that acceptance of the open source concept is now taken for granted - in a good way. BCS managing editor Brian Runciman interviewed Linus Torvalds after he received the BCS Lovelace Medal.

... it can sometimes be hard to get a big picture overview of where Linux is going: what's happening with kernel version 2.6? Will there be a version 3.0? What has Linus been up to lately? What does he get up to in his spare time?

Linus Torvalds says that the new Open Sauce licence, GPLv3 is now officially "not horrible" but not really for him or his Linux operating system.

Linus Torvalds is often described as an open source champion, interested in licensing only insofar as it affects his ability to share code and improve software more quickly. However, his real position is more complicated -- and to some, perhaps surprising.

In this interview, [Torvalds] talks about why he released the code, offers his views on Microsoft and says the future belongs to open source.

Linus Torvalds, creator and maintainer of the Linux operating system kernel, has reacted angrily to suggestions that the kernel's development process is skewed in a way that prevents improvements on the desktop.

A lot about the last few years of Microsoft seems to very much be playing games with customers: their licensing and what, seven different “versions” of Vista, and all the DRM crap they are trying to push on their customers are not actually what anybody wants.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds said the authors of a new software license expected to be used by thousands of open source programmers are a bunch of hypocrites and likened them to religious fanatics -- the latest sign of a growing schism in the open source community between business-minded developers like Torvalds and free software purists.

Spanish newspaper El País is reporting that Linus Torvalds has been nominated for the prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize (Premio Príncipe de Asturias) in the technical and scientific research category.

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz is defending his company's actions in the Linux community, hours after Linux creator Linus Torvalds ripped Sun for taking but not giving back to the open source universe.

Linux leader Linus Torvalds has finally found something that could convince him that the forthcoming version 3 of the General Public License is worth adopting: open-source Solaris.

The GPLv3 debates are drawing to a close. By the end of the year, it may have become reality. Whether or not the Linux kernel team will adopt the new license, however is still up for debate. Linus Torvalds is not as fervently anti-GPLv3 as he was in earlier renditions of the license, but he still isn't ready to support a wholesale move to it, either.

Linux founder and lead developer of the operating system, Linus Torvalds, has come out fighting in response to Microsoft's claims that Linux and free software violate hundreds of Microsoft's patents.

I think the GPL has always been a political platform, but I also think that one thing that the Linux community has done (and yes, I'll take at least some of the credit for that personally) has been to try to view it as just a license, i.e. strip the politics away from it.

Digital rights management and the General Public License cause a lot of "hot air" to be exchanged, but they are not a "big deal", according to the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds.

That Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, prefers the current version of the General Public License, GPLv2, over the version in development, GPLv3, is no secret. But in a lengthy E-mail response to questions from InformationWeek, he offers a full explanation of what he thinks is superior about GPLv2.

Linus Torvalds said he tends to not plan further than three months into the future.

With the imminent release of Windows Vista to consumers this month, Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, has claimed Microsoft's latest desktop effort is over-hyped and not a revolutionary advancement.

Digital rights management and the General Public License cause a lot of 'hot air' to be exchanged but they are not a 'big deal', according to the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds.

Linus Torvalds was just 21 when he changed the world. Working out of his family's apartment in Helsinki in 1991, he wrote the kernel of a new computer operating system called Linux that he posted for free on the Internet — and invited anyone interested to help improve it.

Linus Torvalds has picked up one of Apple's new Intel-based Mac minis to play with, but the Linux creator still prefers Apple's old PowerPC architecture for his primary desktop machine.

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