Why did Torvalds offer the code free of charge?
-He wanted people to access Linux for free and benefit from it. They also can easily change and improve it, since it is free.
Why does he continue to do so today?
- For more than 20 years, Torvalds has been directing thousands of developers to improve the open source OS.
What is the philosophy behind his unique offering and how is it changing the world of software?
-This quote included about his philosophy.
- You know what the most complex piece of engineering known to man in the whole solar system is?
Guess what - it's not Linux, it's not Solaris, and it's not your car.
It's you. And me.
And think about how you and me actually came about - not through any complex design.
Right. "sheer luck".
Well, sheer luck, AND:- free availability and _crosspollination_ through sharing of "source code", although biologists call it DNA.
- a rather unforgiving user environment, that happily replaces bad versions of us with better working versions and thus culls the herd (biologists often call this "survival of the fittest")
- massive undirected parallel development ("trial and error")
I'm deadly serious: we humans have _never_ been able to replicate something more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it without even thinking.
Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest.
And don't EVER make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence _much_ too much credit.
According to my husband, this statement sums up the approach to Linux, under Linus' direction. Lots and lots of trial & error, and constant evolution.
It is a very different from big software companies, where stuff is developed according to rigid plans. If there's a problem with the plan in a big company, they tend to focus more and more effort on that problem, whereas Linus' style is to say "we must be on a dead end, let's start over on this problem."
Source: Jeremy. Linus Says, Linux Not Designed; It Never Was. February 14, 2002. KernelTrap.
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