Linux Creator Linus Torvalds Declined to Join Apple | Hacker News Reader

Linux Creator Linus Torvalds Declined to Join Apple

tomshardware.com

68 pointsjhack70 comments

To know whether it was the right decision or wrong decision would require knowledge of Torvalds decision making framework.

Clearly, the personal offer from Jobs himself makes it apparent that both sides knew that money was not the motivating factor for Linus otherwise a guy in a suit with a briefcase full of cash would have sufficed and a personal call would have been unnecessary.

I'm not sure what the veneration about working at Apple is all about, it's a company, you give them your time, they give you some money. Big deal. If one wants to work at a company that makes products used by billions of people I'd suggest a ball bearing factory.

The reality of working at a company with 10,000 engineers is that you'll probably spend your time writing the perfect unit test for the checkbox on the reminder app. If you really want to be the next Steve Wozniak you're going to have to start in your garage.

Actually I'd think that he would get completely the same job as he has right now, except that works on Darwin instead of Linux and that he gets more money. However, it's quite understandable that he declined, because he'd never leave the project he himself started and saw grow.

To be fair, I think the veneration is more about working at a company which makes products which are in millions of peoples' conscious minds. Nobody pays attention to ball bearings. Why are we talking about ball bearings? Oooh look, an iPad!

The article clearly states that the conversation happened before ip{o,a}d

Linus doesn't have any experience with microkernels and BSD. Jordan Hubbard was a better hire in retrospect.

The "OS X uses a microkernel" myth needs to die. OS X's kernel, XNU, is based on a pre-3.0 version of Mach, which wasn't much of a microkernel to begin with, and neither Apple nor NeXT before it used Mach as a microkernel. You can't even realistically portray it as a hybrid.

Trying to hire both wasn't an option?

of course there's value in hiring Linus that's why Steve tried to hire him.

If you read the book called 'Just for fun' by torvalds, you will find some details of this conversation.

Jobs had to replace the notoriously old Mac OS design, with a new kernel. He had linux and BSD as the base kernels in mind. He offered the job to Torvalds to base the new OS on Linux. Linus, though did not want to build a closed source system, no matter what was offered. So he declined. Then Jobs had to base the new OS on BSD and hired a large group of FreeBSD developers.

The kernel was just 'one' of the many parts that Jobs needed, albeit a complex one. He was more focusing on creating something 'greater than the sum of its parts'.

That's not how I read it. Jobs never had the BSD or Linux kernels in mind, he just wanted Linus to somehow "get all the open source people to like Apple" and stop maintaining a separate ecosystem.

To whoever downvoted: I actually have read "Just For Fun" in its entirety, and that comment was in fact my honest assessment of what I read in that text. If you want me to come back in a couple of hours with a citation, fine.

Jobs tried to recruit Linus after NeXTSTEP was already an established OS.

Uh, no.

Jobs already had a Mach kernel, with a BSD user layer. And that's what they kept. I don't think Linux was ever seriously considered. NeXT's OS made heavy use of Mach messaging, and other features, that would be missing in Linux.

The original article says the offer happened in 2000, which would be kinda late to be changing the OS X kernel so dramatically.

And why would he need Linus to do a kernel when he had Avie Tevanian, from the Mach project and NeXT? Linus isn't the only "kernel guy".

Exactly, NEXTStep was already employing a mach kernel with the BSD user space.

Not working for Apple is possibly the best decision Linus could have made. One can argue that Linux would have kept moving forward without him, but it's really a shame when great talent leaves the open-source community. The man might be opinionated, and some might not like him, but where would we be without his continued contribution?

Not working for Apple is possibly the best decision Linus could have made...

... for us

Something else to ponder:

We probably wouldn't have git or mercurial, and dcvs (would monotone be the frontrunner?) would still be slow and not fun. Github (under any name) and the explosion of dvcs code sharing probably wouldn't exist either. Sourceforge might still be relevant.

I take a guess and predict that many of us mortals would have taken a chance.

This is the worst lead sentence from any article I have seen on HN.

sneaky how he rips off the wired article by saying "apparently...this and that..". We are seeing too much of this kind of journalism lately. You see a catchy article somewhere then rewrite it by saying "so and so reported this. Apparently they found out that...

Yeah, it's pretty thin. The title could be changed to, "Toms Hardware writer reads a Wired article from two days ago". There's no new content of substance, and even the link to the interview is difficult to find. Just terrible.

Apparently this article rips off the Wired article and that's the unfortunate trend in reporting these days.

There's clear value-add here: for some reason, I couldn't find a discussion surrounding the Wired article.

The real reason why the trend is pervasive is because oftentimes one article from one source doesn't reach all corners of the internet. Middlemen cascade the messages.

Considering Job's obsession to build closed systems that goes far beyond just "closed source" this should have been a trivial decision for Linus. As described in the book, Job even insisted to use non-standard screws so owners and hackers couldn't open the box using standard tools.

the other reason, cited in the wired article that it seems this was based from here http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/mr-linux/, is that Linus also didn't like the Mach kernel.

The relevant paragraphs are here:

"Torvalds has never met Bill Gates, but around 2000, when he was still working at Transmeta, he met Steve Jobs. Jobs invited him to Apple’s Cupertino campus and tried to hire him. “Unix for the biggest user base: that was the pitch,” says Torvalds. The condition: He’d have to drop Linux development. “He wanted me to work at Apple doing non-Linux things,” he said. That was a non-starter for Torvalds. Besides, he hated Mac OS’s Mach kernel.

“I said no,” Torvalds remembers."

For the interested reader - Linus' book "Just for fun" has a pretty detailed account of his meeting with Steve Jobs.

Who is surprised by this "revelation"? The only less surprising thing would be Theo or RMS saying no...

I had to wikipedia Theo (founder of OpenBSD and OpenSSH): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt

ROFL I remember this.

BSD guys make fun of Linux on message boards and Web sites, the gist being that BSD guys are a lot like Linux guys, except they have kissed girls.

Theo de Raadt is a pioneer of the open source software movement and a huge proponent of free software. But he is no fan of the open source Linux operating system.

"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"

http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616th...

From that article:

Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment further.

Ha!

It's not even a revelation. Linus wrote about this in his book just for fun, 11 years ago

The remarkable thing about this story to me isn't that Linus turned this down - that seems like an obvious move, frankly, considering Linus' goals and aspirations and the kind of work he's sought out in the past.

The remarkable thing is - why would Steve Jobs offer Linus Torvalds a job? I mean, Steve Jobs was highly intelligent, and he clearly knew that Linus is a top-notch computing mind. But I feel like Steve has a much more focused idea of what he wants from Apple than that. He never ran Apple like it was Google; it never seemed to be his goal to gather an amalgamation of really intelligent people and encourage them to pursue their interests in the hopes of seeing what came out. Apple is a much more focused company than that, isn't it? I mean, Apple seems to have very high standards for who they hire - but those standards include more than just intelligence. It's a company that works toward fixed conceptual goals.

It just doesn't seem like Linus could ever have fit in with Apple culture, and I have a hard time believing that Steve didn't realize that. Maybe it wasn't as well-known yet how irascible Linus can be; or maybe Steve's notion of the culture of Apple hadn't really become as focused and solidified yet, since he'd only returned to Apple three years before.

Either way, as a die-hard Linux guy (albeit one with an iPhone and an iPad) I have to say that I cannot for the life of me imagine Linus Torvalds hacking away at a super-secret iOS subsystem or realigning the internals of the Lion OS or anything like that. I think we know now that Steve Jobs already knew by 2000 that those things were to come - so I wonder how he felt about Linus being part of that.

Anyone remember Jordan Hubbard, co-founder of the FreeBSD project? He joined Apple around that time. I am not really sure how he compares to Linus but working for Apple does not go well with wanting to be a public person.

Yeah, that Guy Kawasaki person, never heard of him. Who's Jean Louis Gassée? Jonathan Ive? All just faceless employees.

Remember the photos from apple's icloud datacenters last year? All linux, and linux powered appliances. Like the gigantic TerraData Extreme Appliances.

I read this "news" on slashdot 10 years ago. Also remember reading about Torvalds interviewig for, but declining to work at Sun, which also in hindsight was a very good decision.

That was a dumb decision on Linus' part. Apple is the future; Linux is the past.

I don't think it's fair to say that it was a dumb decision, because as the article brings out at the time Linux seemed to be more likely to hit the mainstream than Apple.

Also it is ignorant to say that Linux is the past, as it is the current dominant OS when it comes to web servers making it very much in the present.

I also believe Linux is the dominant smartphone OS. (IIRC, Android has the largest marketshare of smartphones http://news.cnet.com/8301-33200_3-57323943-290/ios-vs-androi...)

Not to mention embedded devices. Linux is everywhere.

It's also the dominant OS for supercomputers and (probably) set-top boxes.

Way too broad a statement. Linux is clearly a future for a large segment of users, same as OSX.

Actually, let me take that back - with the new 'post PC' world coming where only techies will have laptops, Linux has a greater future. OSX will fade because all hipsters will just have iOS devices

I don't think Apple will leave the desktop/laptop field any time soon. In fact the statements they have been making with regard to OS X Mountain Lion show that they recognize the importance of desktop/laptop form factor. They just want to provide some of the "hipster" features of iOS on the desktop.

You may be underestimating the number of techies liking OS X.

I think the problem is a lot of techies like OS X now, but not the way it's headed.

Lion is enough to make me switch away, and I've been on OS X for a very long time. What's keeping OS X popular now is not its own merits, but that the alternatives are even worse.

I have to agree because I like Snow Leopard better than Lion and have not made the switch yet because of that. However I don't think this is a sign that OS X is endemic. I still have hope that Lion is just an ill planned stop on the OS X progression.

endemic - I do not think it means what you think it means.

Mind if I ask what you don't like? I upgraded a few months ago, and while I had to turn a few annoying bits off, it's overall much better than Snow Leopard.

It's 99% that I hate (and I don't use that lightly) them screwing up Expose (to me this was the OS X killer feature on laptops) and the changes in scrolling. 1% is the unwelcome increase in skeuomorphism.

Generally I don't get on with iOS either, so iOSification is a trend I'm not into. I accept that may not be a popular opinion, but there we are.

You should check out KDE--I think you'd like some of the standard window manager features there. They have some effects reminiscent of Exposé (as well as a bunch of other options). And the current version of KDE is also, overall, the best environment I've ever used (out of Unity, Gnome 2, Windows 95+ and OS X Leopard and Lion).

> screwing up Expose

"Screwing up"? Works much better for me. Have you actually taken some time to play with it?

> the changes in scrolling

You mean the changes you can turn off?

> 1% is the unwelcome increase in skeuomorphism.

To what are you referring, exactly?

And I think you're overestimating that number. As far as I know, about as many programmers use Linux as OS X, and Windows still dominates even among programmers. For example, the recent StackOverflow survey--probably fairly indicative of programmers in general--found that about 20% of the respondents used Linux and OS X with the rest on various versions of Windows[1]. As far as my own experience goes, about as many of my CS friends use Linux as Windows, with a slightly smaller number using OS X. But here, I suspect, there is some serious selection bias.

[1]: https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=2RYrV_2bFw2aZ2RfedWH...

This is not an opportunity for Apple. It looks like trying to get rid of a known person from competition. Linus doesn't even write that much code anymore - he's controlling the releases and is vocal in the community, but I'm not sure why would Apple want him for. They've got their own processes and they don't need that kind of control over internal developers.

Was there any real gain for them from that offer?

Really? I think Linux might be the future with it getting ready for the mass market, and with new hardware like the raspberry PI, Linux has only began it's global domination.

That was a dumb decision on Linus' part. Apple is the future; Linux is the past.

This sounds so familiar; where have I heard it before. Oh yeah, it's what the MS fanboys were saying ten years ago :)

Not that I'm anywhere near Linus' capabilities, but I would turn down a job offer from Apple too. I don't much fancy working for evil.

how's apple any more "evil" than any other big company (google included)?

For one, the other companies have other redeeming features: Microsoft has MSR, Google also does some research as well as a lot of open source stuff and IBM also does good research. Even Facebook contributes more to the community at large and the state of the art, as far as I know. All that Apple does is mostly produce overrated products in secrecy.

Apple is also very anti-freedom in the GNU sense, and have horrible policies on iOS and their app store. They really treat developers working on their platform poorly, and actively work against letting their customers have alternatives. (Jailbreaking shouldn't even be necessary!)

However, the really worst thing is how popular they are. Their draconian policies on iOS have pushed other companies--like Microsoft--to emulate that on their own problems; as far as I know, Windows Phone is almost as locked down as iOS. So Apple is at a weird confluence of evil and popular support, which is much more dangerous than evil by itself (this is why they are more worrisome than e.g. Oracle or even Microsoft). Their worst effect is cultural--making the nonsense around third-party iOS programs seem reasonable.

If Linux dominated the market, you would be free to use it however you like. If iOS dominated the market, you'd have to play by Apple's rules--getting a developer account, going through their review process... And even OS X is going in this direction--you have to deal with Apple to get your code signed, and there are no alternatives.

In a lot of ways, Apple is worse than Microsoft in its heyday; their only saving grace is their small market share--thankfully, Apple does not enjoy a monopoly anywhere or even a large share of the desktop market. Still, ignoring scale, they really are worse than Microsoft was; the scale is the reason they get away with all the things Microsoft couldn't (like standard web browsers or music players).

To be fair apple's CUPS is pretty critical for printing under linux.

And then there is webkit.

To be more fair Webkit started as a fork of some of KDE's libraries.

Yeah, but it's being used, and developed, a hell of a lot more now than it was as part of KDE.

Apple bought CUPS

Google bought X.

X being pretty much everything they do besides Search. Not sure if that is much of an argument.

Honestly, I wouldn't work for Apple either. I'd hate to give up the community I've spent most of my programming life a part of - the jailbreaking community. It'd take more than a giant salary to rewrite my values. :P

Probably over 80% of shiny content that users consume on Apple devices is served by Linux servers. Ever heard of that little thing called cloud? It's powered by Linux for the most part.

By making operating system a commodity Linux changed computer industry forever, and it's not going anywhere. Don't underestimate it.

nit: a big chunk of the web is powered by FreeBSD.

This is no longer the case, from my reading.

http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd/all/all

How big?

> "Apple is the future; Linux is the past."

Even Apple itself doesn't believe that. They left the server market when they killed Xserve.

Bullshit!

Urr what OS do you think powers iCloud?

Windows, because Apple uses Azure[1] in the iCloud infrastructure.

[1] http://www.infiniteapple.net/apple-icloud-azure-use-tested-c...

As I recall Apple was going to make use of both Azure and Amazon's cloud stuff.

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