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Just for Fun

The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

by
Linus Benedict Torvalds

2001

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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 Internetfor 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

]

IX: Is the Linux Revolution Over?
By Scott Berinato, PC Week

[]
Warning: Intermediate geek language until page 119.

[]
Boy, that has to be an acquired taste. Im guessing it started out with Puritans who couldnt drink beer because it has alcohol. So they concocted a beverage that didnt have alcohol in it and happened to be made with roots, and they called it root beer to fool people into thinking it was good stuff. And after ten generations of people being fooled into thinking it was good stuff, people bought into it. Today, Americans like root beer because they have ten generations of genetic engineering behind them.

[]
This, as anybody who lives in San Jose can tell you, is called IRONY. San Jose doesnt have nightlife. People living here drive to San Mateo if they actually want to have fun.

[]
Actually, Einstein did work for the patent office when he did his work on special relativity. But he was special. Even most patent clerks admit that.

[]
Theres nothing wrong with a Pontiac Grand Am, and its a fine car. Its also probably the most average Joe car in the whole United States, and some journalists have found it interesting that I would have such an embarrassingly regular car. Its not even Japanese, for chrissake! People will lose all respect for me when I admit that I spent hours agonizing over the exact color of my new cara much less practical BMW Z3. RememberJust for Fun. That car is completely and utterly useless for anything but fun. And thats just the way I like it.

[]
Or Diannix, as the case may be. In another twenty years, hopefully computer science will have progressed past the current male-dominated scene it is now.

[]
Yes, sure, Ill do it.

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 wouldnt 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 couldnt 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, its 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 worlds 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 modelan intricate web of its own, encompassing hundreds of thousands of volunteer computer programmershad 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 didnt like what they saw. Linuss round, bespectacled countenance became a favored dart-board 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 whoif he did not start it allat 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 werent 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 wasnt their idea of how to run a revolution.

Revolutionaries arent born. Revolutions cant be planned. Revolutions cant 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 torvalds@transmeta.com

To: David Diamond

Subject: Ho hum..

MIME-Version: 1.0

I hope this is still your email address. I noticed that I didnt have any contact information for you anywhere, probably because Ive trashed your business card along with all the others, and because youve actually contacted me by phone much more than by email.

Ive thought a lot over the weekend, and if youre interested, I think Im getting more and more interested. Lets cut a deal: If you think we can make a fun book, and more importantly if you think we can have fun making it, lets go for it. Youd drag me (with family) camping and (without family) skydiving. Things that I wouldnt ever do otherwise, just because I think Im too busy. Give me an excuse to do the things I havent done during the last three years even though all the opportunities are there So maybe I wouldnt read a book about me when its done, but at least Id have fun with it.

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