Just for Fun : The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary Read online

  Just for Fun

  The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

  by

  Linus Benedict Torvalds

  2001

  All Your Books Are Belong To Us !

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  Just for Fun

  The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

  Copyright © 2001 Linus Benedict Torvalds

  Co-Author: David Diamonds

  First Published 2001 by HarperBusiness

  ISBN 0066620732 (ISBN13: 9780066620732)

  Once upon a time Linus Torvalds was a skinny unknown, just another nerdy Helsinki techie who had been fooling around with computers since childhood. Then he wrote a groundbreaking operating system and distributed it via the Internet—for free. Today Torvalds is an international folk hero. And his creation LINUX is used by over 12 million people as well as by companies such as IBM.

  Now, in a narrative that zips along with the speed of e-mail, Torvalds gives a history of his renegade software while candidly revealing the quirky mind of a genius. The result is an engrossing portrayal of a man with a revolutionary vision, who challenges our values and may change our world.

  Contents

  Introduction: Post-its from a Revolution

  Preface: The Meaning of Life I (Sex, War, Linux)

  Birth of a NERD

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  Birth of an OPERATING SYSTEM[1]

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V: The Beauty of Programming

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X: Minix vs. Linux

  XI

  XII

  King of the BALL

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX: Is the Linux Revolution Over?

  By Scott Berinato, PC Week

  X

  XI

  XII

  Intellectual Property

  An End to Control

  THE AMUSEMENT RIDE AHEAD

  WHY OPEN SOURCE MAKES SENSE

  FAME AND FORTUNE

  THE MEANING OF LIFE II

  Back Cover

  To Tove and Patricia, Daniela, and Celeste. I always wanted to be surrounded by young women, and you made it so.

  To Tia and Kaley. Boy do I feel blessed.

  This wouldn’t qualify as acknowledgments without the dropping of some important names, so here goes:

  We acknowledge our editor, Adrian Zackheim, who caved in to our every demand; Erin Richnow, the HarperCollins assistant editor who was more on top of this project than we were; our agents, Bill Gladstone of Waterside Productions and Kris Dahl of ICM, who couldn’t have been speedier in the forwarding of our checks to us; Sara Torvalds, who has the best backup memory on the Fennoscandia peninsula-and operates in three languages-and William and Ruth Diamond, who read the original manuscript and kept repeating, “No, really, it’s good.”

  My heart was in my throat when he was growing up: How on Earth was he going to meet any nice girls that way?

  -Anna Torvalds

  Introduction: Post-its from a Revolution

  During the euphoria of the final years of the twentieth century, a revolution was happening among all the other revolutions. Seemingly overnight, the Linux operating system caught the world’s attention. It had exploded from the small bedroom of its creator, Linus Torvalds, to attract a cultish following of near-militant geeks. Suddenly it was infiltrating the corporate powerhouses controlling the planet. From a party of one it now counted millions of users on every continent, including Antarctica, and even outer space, if you count NASA outposts. Not only was it the most common operating system running server computers dishing out all the content on the World Wide Web, but its very development model—an intricate web of its own, encompassing hundreds of thousands of volunteer computer programmers—had grown to become the largest collaborative project in the history of the world. The open source philosophy behind it all was simple: Information, in this case the source code or basic instructions behind the operating system, should be free and freely shared for anyone interested in improving upon it. But those improvements should also be freely shared. The same concept had supported centuries of scientific discovery. Now it was finding a home in the corporate sphere, and it was possible to imagine its potential as a framework for creating the best of anything: a legal strategy, an opera.

  Some folks caught a glimpse of the future and didn’t like what they saw. Linus’s round, bespectacled countenance became a favored dartboard target within Microsoft Corporation, which was now faced with its first honest-to-goodness competitive threat. But, more often, people wanted to learn more about the kid who—if he did not start it all—at least jump-started it and was, in effect, its leader. The trouble was, the more successful Linux and open source became, the less he wanted to talk about it. The accidental revolutionary started Linux because playing on a computer was fun (and also because the alternatives weren’t that attractive). So when someone tried to convince him to speak at a major event by telling him that his millions of followers just wanted to at least see him, in the flesh, Linus good-naturedly offered to participate in a dunk-tank instead. That would be more fun, he explained. And a way of raising money.

  They declined. It wasn’t their idea of how to run a revolution.

  Revolutionaries aren’t born. Revolutions can’t be planned. Revolutions can’t be managed.

  Revolutions happen….

  ––David Diamond

  X-Authentication-Warning: penguin. transmeta.com:

  torvalds owned process doing-bs

  Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:12:27-0700 (PDT)

  From: Linus Torvalds [email protected]

  To: David Diamond

  Subject: Ho hum..

  MIME-Version: 1.0

  I hope this is still your email address. I noticed that I didn’t have any contact information for you anywhere, probably because I’ve trashed your business card along with all the others, and because you’ve actually contacted me by phone much more than by email.

  I’ve thought a lot over the weekend, and if you’re interested, I think I’m getting more and more interested. Let’s cut a deal: If you think we can make a fun book, and more importantly if you think we can have fun making it, let’s go for it. You’d drag me (with family) camping and (without family) skydiving. Things that I wouldn’t ever do otherwise, just because I think I’m too busy. Give me an excuse to do the things I haven’t done during the last three years even though all the opportunities are there… So maybe I wouldn’t read a book about me when it’s done, but at least I’d have fun with it.

  Linus

  … And sometimes, revolutionaries just get stuck with it.

  Linus Torvalds

  Acknowledgments

  The authors wish to acknowledge the following establishments for their role in creating this book––or at least making it fun (None of these places have paid us any money. Which is a damn shame.)

  FM 107.7 the Bone. Classic Rock That Rocks; Zelda’s Restaurant, Capitola; Kiva Retreat House, Santa Cruz; Hagashi West Restaurant, Palo Alto; Malibu Grand Prix, Redwood Shores; Bodega Bay Lodge, Bodega Bay; Saturn Café, Santa Cruz; Café Marmalade, Ross; Half Moon Bay Boardshop, Half Moon Bay; Santa Cruz Billiards, Santa Cruz; Café Reyes, Point Reyes Station; Califo Sushi and Gri
ll, San Jose; Santa Clara Golf and Tennis Club, Santa Clara; Ideal Bar and Grill, Santa Cruz; Silver Peso Bar (“Where Janis Played”), Larkspur; Rosie McCann’s Irish Pub and Restaurant, Santa Cruz; Mayfl Inn, San Rafael; Grover Hot Springs State Park, Markleeville; Left Bank Restaurant, Larkspur; Potrero Brewing Company, San Francisco; The Rice Table, San Rafa Ross Valley Swim and Tennis Club, Kentfield; Fallen Leaf Lake Marina, Fallen Leaf Lake; Peer’s Coff and Tea, Greenbrae; Hawthorne Lane Restaurant, San Francisco; Indian Springs Resort, Calistoga; Samurai Sushi, Sausalito; Blowfi Sushi, San Francisco; Paramount’s Great America, Santa Clara; Robata Grill Sushi, Mill Valley; Buckeye Roadhouse, Mill Valley; Barnes and Noble, San Jose; Sushi Ran, Sausalito; 23 Ross Common, Ross; KFOG-104.5 FM; Rutherfo Grill, Rutherfo In-N-Out Burger, Santa Rosa; Seto Sushi, Sunnyvale.

  Preface: The Meaning of Life I (Sex, War, Linux)

  SETTING: This book has its origins in a late-model black Ford Expedition in the southbound lanes of Interstate 5, somewhere in California Central Valley. Linus and Tove Torvalds and their young daughters, Patricia and Daniela, are accompanied by an interloper as they travel 351 miles to Los Angeles, where they will visit the zoo and an IKEA outlet.

  DAVID: Now I’ve got a fundamental question to think about, and it’s sort of important. What do you want to get across in this book?

  LINUS: Well, I want to explain the meaning of life.

  TOVE: Linus, did you remember to fill the gas tank?

  L: I have a theory about the meaning of life. We can, in the first chapter, explain to people what the meaning of life is. We get them hooked that way. Once they’re hooked and pay for the book, we can just fill up the rest with random crap.

  D: Oh yes. That sounds like a plan. Someone told me that since the dawn of man there have been two lingering questions. One:

  “What is the meaning of life?”

  and Two:

  “What can I do with all this pocket change that accumulates at the end of the day?”

  L: I have the answer to the first one.

  D: What’s the answer to the first one?

  L: Basically it is short and sweet. It won’t give your life any meaning, but it tells you what’s going to happen. There are three things that have meaning for life. They are the motivational factors for everything in your life––for anything that you do or any living thing does: The first is survival, the second is social order, and the third is entertainment. Everything in life progresses in that order. And there is nothing after entertainment. So, in a sense, the implication is that the meaning of life is to reach that third stage. And once you’ve reached the third stage, you’re done. But you have to go through the other stages first.

  D: You’re going to have to explain this a little more.

  PATRICIA: Papa, can we stop for chocolate ice cream? I would like to have some chocolate ice cream now!

  T: No, sweetie. You have to wait. When we stop to go potty you can have ice cream.

  L: I’ll give you a few examples so you can kind of get the idea. And the obvious one is sex. It started out as survival, but it became a social thing. That’s why you get married. And then it becomes entertainment.

  P: Then I have to go potty.

  D: How is it entertaining?

  L: Okay, I’m talking to the wrong person. How about this one?

  D: No, go back to sex.

  L: It’s also on another level…

  D: (to self): Oh, entertaining to participate in as opposed to watch. Okay, I get it.

  L: … On another level, if you look at the illusion of sex in a biological sense––How did sex come about in the first place? It was survival. It wasn’t entertaining initially. It was just getting together. Okay, let’s drop the sex part.

  D: No, no. I think this is a whole chapter.

  L: Let’s pick war instead. It’s obvious it started as survival, because there’s a big guy between you and the water hole. Next, you need to fight the guy for a wife. And then war becomes a social-order thing. That’s how it was long before the Middle Ages.

  D: War as a means of establishing social order.

  L: Right. And also a means of establishing yourself as part of the social order. Nobody cares about social order, per se. Everybody cares about his own place in that order. It’s the same thing whether you’re a hen in a pecking order or you’re a human.

  D: And now war is for entertainment?

  L: That’s right.

  D: Maybe for people watching it on TV. For them it might be entertaining.

  L: Computer games. War games. CNN. Well, the reason for war can often be entertaining. But also the perception of war is entertaining. And the reason for sex is often entertaining. Sure, the survival part is still there, especially if you’re Catholic, right? But even if you’re Catholic, sometimes you probably think about the entertainment part, too. So it doesn’t have to be plain entertainment. In everything, a piece of the motivation might be survival, a piece might be social order, and the rest might be entertainment. Okay, look at technology. Technology came about as survival. And survival is not about just surviving, it’s about surviving better. You get a windmill that draws water from the well…

  D: Or fire.

  L: Right. It’s still survival, but it hasn’t progressed to social order and entertainment.

  D: Now how has technology progressed to social order?

  L: Well, actually most of industrialization has been really just survival, or surviving better. In cars, that meant making faster cars and nicer cars. But then you get to technology in a social sense. That brings us the telephone. And TV, to some degree. A lot of the early TV stuff was basically for indoctrination. Radio, too. That’s why countries often started investing in radio, for the social-order side of it.

  D: Establishing and maintaining social order…

  L: Right, but then it just goes past that. Today, TV is obviously used mostly for entertainment. And right now you see all these wireless mobile phones. It’s basically social. But it’s moving into entertainment, too.

  D: So what’s the future of technology? We’ve gone beyond the survival stage and now we’re in the social stage, right?

  L: Right. All technology used to do was make life easier. It was all about getting places faster, buying things cheaper, having better houses, whatever. So what’s so different about information technology? What comes after the fact that everybody is connected? What more is there to do? Sure, you can connect better, but that’s not fundamentally different. So where is technology taking us? In my opinion, the next big step is entertainment.

  D: Everything eventually evolves into entertainment…

  L: But this also explains why Linux is so successful, to some degree. Think of the three motivational factors. First is survival, which people with computers take for granted. Quite frankly, if you have a computer, you’ve already bought your food and stuff like that. The second is for social order, and the social side is certainly motivational for geeks sitting inside their own cubicles.

  D: You said something really smart at Comdex, something about Linux development being a global team sport. So, you basically made that happen, dude.

  L: Linux is a great example of why people love team sports, and especially being part of a team.

  D: Yeah, sitting in front of a computer all day, you’d probably want to feel like you were part of something. Anything.

  L: It’s social, like any other team sport. Imagine people on a football team, especially in high school. The social part of Linux is really, really important. But Linux is also entertainment, the kind of entertainment that is very hard to buy with money. Money is a very powerful motivational factor when you’re at the level of survival, because it’s easy to buy survival. It’s very easy to barter for those kinds of things. But suddenly when you’re at the level of entertainment, money…

  D: Money is useless?

  L: No, it’s not useless, because obviously you can buy movies, fast cars, vacations. There are a lot of things you can buy that
can help make your situation better.

  T: Linus, we need to change Daniela. And Patricia has to go potty. I need a cappuccino. Do you think we can find a Starbucks here? Where are we?

  D: (looks up): Based on the odor, I think we’re near King City.

  L: Now all this is on a bigger scale. It’s not just about people, it’s about life. It’s like the Law of Entropy. In this Entropy Law of Life, everything moves from survival to entertainment, but that doesn’t mean that on a local scale it can’t go backward, and obviously it essentially does. Things just disintegrate sometimes.

  D: But as a system, everything is moving in the same direction…

  L: Everything is moving in the same direction, but not at the same time. So basically sex has reached entertainment, war is close to it, technology is pretty much there. The new things are things that are just survival. Like, hopeful space travel will at some point be an issue of survival, then it will be social, then entertainment. Look at civilization as a cult. I mean, that also follows the same pattern. Civilization starts as survival. You get together to survive better and you build up your social structure. Then eventually civilization exists purely for entertainment. Okay, well, not purely. And it doesn’t have to be bad entertainment. The ancient Greeks are known for having had a very strong social order, and they also had a lot of entertainment. They’re known for having had the best philosophers of their time.

  D: Okay, so how does this tie in to the meaning of life?

  L: It doesn’t really. It just says that… that’s kind of the problem here.

  D: This is the little link you’re going to have to think about.

  P: Mama, look at the cows.

  L: So, if you know that life is all about this progression, then obviously your purpose in life is to make this progression. And the progression is not one single progression. Everything you do is part of many progressions. It can also be, “What can I do to make society better?” You know that you’re a part of society. You know that society is moving in this direction. You can help society move in this direction.