I think of myself as an engineer, not as a visionary or ‘big thinker.’ I don’t have any lofty goals.
Eventually the revolutionaries become the established culture, and then what will they do.
The way to do good basic design isn’t actually to be really smart about it, but to try to have a few basic concepts.
When you hear voices in your head that tell you to shoot the pope, do you do what they say? Same thing goes for customers and managers. They are the crazy voices in your head, and you need to set them right, not just blindly do what they ask for.
I am very happy about Android obviously. I use Android, and it’s actually made cellphones very usable.
In many ways, I am very happy about the whole Linux commercial market because the commercial market is doing all these things that I have absolutely zero interest in doing myself.
I’ve felt strongly that the advantage of Linux is that it doesn’t have a niche or any special market, but that different individuals and companies end up pushing it in the direction they want, and as such you end up with something that is pretty balanced across the board.
The economics of the security world are all horribly, horribly nasty and are largely based on fear, intimidation and blackmail.
I started Linux as a desktop operating system. And it’s the only area where Linux hasn’t completely taken over. That just annoys the hell out of me.
Before the commercial ventures, Linux tended to be rather hard to set up, because most of the developers were motivated mainly by their own interests.
People enjoy the interaction on the Internet, and the feeling of belonging to a group that does something interesting: that’s how some software projects are born.
The cyberspace earnings I get from Linux come in the format of having a Network of people that know me and trust me, and that I can depend on in return.
I am not out to destroy Microsoft, that would be a completely unintended side effect.
Let’s put it this way: if you need to ask a lawyer whether what you do is right or not, you are morally corrupt. Let’s not go there. We don’t base our morality on law.
The fact is, there aren’t just two sides to any issue, there’s almost always a range of responses, and “it depends” is almost always the right answer in any big question.
Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me. But there’s only one of me.
I think one thing I do pretty well is not taking myself too seriously.
I can mostly laugh at myself and this whole mess called “Linux developers,” which means that I get along with most people and most people get along with me.
I changed the Linux copyright license to be the GPL some time in the first half of 1992. Mostly because I had hated the lack of a cheaply and easily available UNIX when I had looked for one a year before.
I’m not worried about the kernel itself or the basic system. All the commercialization is about the distributions and the applications. As such, it only brings value-added things to Linux, and it doesn’t take anything away from the Linux scene.
I’m perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds and looking at the stars and saying, “I want to go there.” But I’m looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that’s right in front of me before I fall in.