Linus Torvalds: The mind behind Linux

ted.com

30 points·dankohn1··5 comments

The linked list code example wasn't something I expected to see in a TED talk :)

Toward the end he mentioned Wikipedia and open academic journals - never really thought of those things as under the open source umbrella, so that was eye opening for me. A popular Wikipedia page probably touches more lives in a more meaningful, or at least more direct, way then any commit pushed to GitHub.

I watched this earlier today - really insightful. I also love that his intention was to never make something great for the industry, just something great for him. That's where the best projects come from.

So why is Linux everywhere? Is it only because it's free?

It might have been that initially. These days it’s because a whole ecosystem was created around it, and yes, most of it it’s kind of free.

Think about it: if you wanted to work on something but you had to pay either for the software or documentation you need to base your work on, it’d be a blocker of sorts for a lot of people, specially if you’re just a student wanting to do a “simple” thing or wanting to test something. That’s just an example.

Having a 30-day trial of something helps, but it’ll probably not give you all the answers you need.

There are many more operating systems that are free (both free as in freedom and as in free of charge). None of them became as popular as Linux.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com