English_ENG.srt

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Let me make an analogy
between programs and recipes.

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A program is a lot like a recipe.
Each one is a list of steps to be-

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-carried out with rules for
how to tell when you're done-

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-or when to go back. At
the end there's a certain result.

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If you cook you probably
exchange recipes with your friends-

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-and you probably change recipes too.

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If you've made changes and you,
and your friends, like eating it-

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-then you might give them
the changed version of the recipe.

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Imagine a world where you
can't change the recipe-

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-because somebody has gone
out of his way to make it impossible.

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And imagine that if you share
the recipe they will call you a pirate-

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-and try to put you in prison for years.

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I use the word "hacker" in its
correct and original sense to describe-

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-someone who pursues computer
programming as an artistic passion-

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-and who also is part of or
identifies with the hacker culture-

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-which is historically programmers who
produced the Internet, Linux and WWW.

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I guess you have to be a hacker
to understand the specific mindset-

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-that is to rebel against the idea that
the OS source code should be withheld.

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This open source attitude doesn't mix
smoothly with the free market economy.

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It's also a threat to the traditional concepts
of copyright and intellectual property.

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Companies like Microsoft that base
their business on closed source code-

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-have tactively molded
free software into an image-

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-of a monster of almost
McCarthian proportions.

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All this made up one of the strangest
success stories of the 1990's-

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-epitomized by the community's
gifted leader and invaluable icon.

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He planted the seed for a movement
whose ramifications continue to spread.

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<i>Linus Torvalds has created a
computer system that has struck-</i>

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<i>-the whole industry with amazement.</i>

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<i>Linux - an operating system that now
runs 8 million of the world's computers.</i>

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<i>Wired Magazine : "He is a shaman
on par with Väinämöinen-</i>

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<i>-and his operating system Linux is
the Internet's most brilliant masterpiece".</i>

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<i>Torvald's decision to distribute
Linux for free and reveal-</i>

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<i>-its underlying source code
has made him a cult figure.</i>

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Linus Torvalds, the computer genius
who dreams of defeating Microsoft,-

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-actually Bill Gates. How's it going?

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<i>There are those who say that
Linus Torvalds has achieved a-</i>

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<i>-miracle.</i>

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The worker ants are constantly
in contact with each other by modems-

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-releasing code, encouraging
feedback on modifications-

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-to create the best possible
operating system in the world.

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San Jose, California

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I didn't want anybody else to have
to go through the same thing I had-

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-to find something like Linux. Maybe
some other computer science student-

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-needs his own operating system and
he doesn't have to start from scratch.

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It wasn't a fight against the windmills.
It wasn't Don Quixote against the world-

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-trying to make a better place.

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<i>Come, come. Do you want food?</i>

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I much prefer working with people
over email than face to face.

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Else you tend to get into all these
meaningless arguments and details.

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Over email you have to think a bit
before you send off a reply.

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Just because we aren't at the same
place doesn't mean that we aren't-

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-together in a social sense. It's like one
very, very large shared office.

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We even have our arguments over
the Internet in the same kind of way.

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This is a huge project. There's never
been a software project that I know of-

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-that's been worked on by so many
people from so many disperse places-

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-to put this all together.

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The most innovative thing about
the Linux community is not its-

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-source code but the social
machine that developed around it.

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What Linux is...?
I suppose I would say...

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Every computer is different,
every floppy disk drive is different-

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-every hard disk is different,
every video controller is different...

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Linux is the thing that knows how
to make all these different parts-

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-do the simple tasks
like "write my file to the disk" or-

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-"read this file off this floppy I have",
or "draw this image on the screen".

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Linux knows how to talk to
these different pieces of hardware-

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-to make them do the common
operations that we need computers to do.

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What do we mean when we say "Linux"?
Some mean the whole operating system-

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-on which everything that
happens in a computer weighs.

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Some say "Linux", pinpointing the single
most important program - the kernel.

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It has to go back to the person
who started it. To the person who-

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-somehow used the net to create
a community of people-

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-who all felt that their
contributions were being valued.

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That ability to foster cooperation
could very well be something-

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-that can only come from a
person raised in a country like Finland.

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Helsinki, Finland

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1969 - it seems to
have been such a good year.

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The moon landing, Woodstock, the birth
of ARPANET, that led to Internet.

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The first steps of UNIX, the
operating system for big computers-

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-and on December 28
Linus Torvalds is born.

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All children learn primarily
through playing.

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For that reason I think it was
very important for Linus to enter-

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-the computer world when computers
still were simple enough even for a-

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-10-12 year old boy to understand
what was inside this machine.

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In today's world there's so
many layers of information and-

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-complicated stuff between that which
is shown on the computer screen-

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-and that which is inside the machine.
It's difficult for the children of today-

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-to play their way to the insight
the same way Linus did.

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I think it was love at first
sight both for my father and for-

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-Linus who together were childishly
excited, both of them, to try-

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-the possibilities that VIC-20 offered.

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The place where Linus developed
Linux is no longer-

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-because the walls have
been torn down.

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Here in the corner where the couch is
is where Linus' desktop and computer,-

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-that he worked on, used to be.

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The biggest change is that he
nowadays is a stand up-guru-

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-because he is used to perform in front
of an audience and he can handle them.

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That might not be surprising, but still
striking when compared with how-

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-he actually was: relatively shy and
withdrawn, and not the one who-

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-got in touch, but his friends were
the ones who kept in touch with him.

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<i>Hello everybody out there using MINIX.
I'm doing a free operating system.</i>

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<i>Just a hobby. Won't be big
and professional-</i>

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<i>-like "GNU" for 386 and 486
AT clones.</i>

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<i>This has been brewing since
April and is starting to get ready.</i>

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<i>I'd like any feedback on things
people like or dislike in MINIX-</i>

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<i>-as my OS resembles it somewhat.
Any suggestions are welcome-</i>

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<i>-but I won't promise I'll actually
implement them.</i>

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torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi

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1991 - The Soviet Union closes down.

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The Gulf War.

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The British physicist
Tim Berners-Lee-

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-releases a hypertext system,
calling it the "World Wide Web".

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Microsoft is well on the way
for world domination.

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And on September 17
Linus Torvalds sends the first-

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-version of Linux, 0.01,
to the world, via Internet.

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The first responses arrive
within hours.

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"Linux was invented here"

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"University of Helsinki"

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We first heard whispers
in the cafeteria-

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An operating system was being
developed and started to spread.

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We learned to know Linus better.

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His programming skills had
already been noted here.

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Linus based Linux on UNIX,
because of its basic ideals.

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The original UNIX operating system
had been created by Ken Thompson-

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-and Dennis Ritchie
at AT&T's Bell Labs in 1969.

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UNIX was in the beginning a
relatively free operating system-

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-and very popular in
the university circles.

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The philosophy is
based on two notions:

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Firstly, everything is a file.

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Secondly, when you build something
you write things that are for a single-

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-purpose but to
do that purpose well.

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Putting Linux on the net
was kind of natural in many ways.

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There were a lot of small reasons.
Like the fact that I thought it was-

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-a good idea to make Linux available to
others so that they could try it out-

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-and send comments back to me.

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He really had two choices.
He could make it completely free-

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-or he can try and charge for it.

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Linux would not exist if he
had tried to make profit out of it.

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Nobody would have bought it.
It would have been a dead end.

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You haven't been here for a while.
We've already installed the third version...

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We had difficulties to fit
Linux-stuff into one computer.

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At first Linus didn't want to
release Linux for free.

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He was thinking hard about
what kind of copyright he would use.

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I persuaded him to release it
under the GNU copyright.

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Especially, as the compiler I
used was released under the GPL-

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-I eventually ended
up using the GPL myself.

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The "GNU General Public License" (GPL)
funded by the Free Software Foundation-

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-in the mid 1980's says that
if you change and modify the code-

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-you have to make your changes
and improvements freely available.

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The GPL hinders any one person
to have a monopoly-

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-over an important
piece of technology.

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I think the timing was good. Even
just a year earlier I don't think it-

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-could've been done, and a year later
someone would've done something similar.

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The Internet hadn't gotten
to the general population-

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-but it was getting very strong
in university networks.

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I'd done a mailing list program
in the "C" programming language-

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I had to expand it
and add features.

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Rapidly thousands of
people were interested.

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It was a surprise. The numbers
doubled in short intervals.

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It was crazy. After 1000 people
2000, the next day 4000 people.

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Without Internet Linux development
would've been like chess by mail.

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My name of choice was "FREAX".

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Which was both "free", "freak"
plus the "X" that you need for UNIX.

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I didn't like the name FREAX.
It wasn't very commercial...

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Ari Lemmke, who actually put Linux up for
FTP, thought that it really was a bad idea.

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He really hated the name. He
made the FTP site available and just-

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-called it Linux because
that was the working name.

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The name stuck, and Linux
is a much better name...

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"GEEKS"

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"NERDS"

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We have an impressive
set of geeks and nerds here.

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The first question from the easy category:
"How do you pronounce Linux?"

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Well, I pronounce Linux as "Linux".

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However, the total answer
to that is if you're Linus Torvalds-

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-you probably pronounce
it "Leenux". On the other hand,-

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-if you come from the west
coast of the United States-

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-you pronounce it as "Lynix". And Linus
said he doesn't care how you pronounce it-

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-as long as you just use it!

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It was in July of 1991-

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-which was shortly after Linus had
released the 0.09 version of the kernel-

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-that I started playing with Linux.
Heard about it on, I think, Usenet.

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Downloaded it from Finland,
started playing with it-

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-and thought it was really neat!

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At that point there was very
limited trans-Atlantic Internet bandwidth-

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-so it was very painful to down-
load all these packages from Finland.

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And so I decided: "Well, we
need to do something about this"-

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-and I used my personal workstation,
"TSX-11.mit.edu"-

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-and I set up a mirror archive of all the
kernel sources on my private workstation.

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And that was the first US
Linux FTP site that came into existence.

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The first time I got Linux was I
downloaded the floppy images for Linux-

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-and in the Penn State University computer lab
I installed it on one of their machines.

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They subsequently kicked me
out of the computer lab that day-

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-but that was my
first experience with Linux.

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Very early in 1992 suddenly
I didn't know everybody anymore.

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That it was no longer
me and a couple of friends.

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It was me and a couple of
hundred people who I had no idea-

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-where they were, what they
did with the system, and who they are.

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And that was a big step.

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University of Helsinki

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The 1.0 release in 1994 was certainly
important and it meant a lot to me-

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-just because there
was a lot of work behind it.

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It was certainly a landmark to
commercial use of Linux.

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It was really hard to use
Linux commercially before 1.0.

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Welcome to Linux operating
system 1.0 press conference.

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Why is this kind of UNIX-like
system done at all -

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-especially at the University of Helsinki?

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Because there exists, also
for PC, UNIX operating systems -

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-but they are very expensive.

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For example,
DOS costs about 200 marks.

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UNIX costs 20 000 marks.

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It's pretty much for a student to pay.

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Try going to a computer
shop and ask for SCU-Unix.

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They will look at you
as if you were mad.

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In fact, it is easier
to write it yourself!

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The development
process of Linux is odd.

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It's not a hierarchy, but everyone
is free to suggest changes to the code.

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There's one person who leads, makes the
big decisions, and chooses the best ideas:

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Linus - "the benevolent dictator".

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Everyone knew that someone
had to be the head of this work group-

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-and Linus was the natural head,
given that he did the original core Linux-

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00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:21,000
-kernel and Linus was someone
who was a very, very good leader.

221
00:21:21,500 --> 00:21:24,500
He's someone who's actually quite humble.

222
00:21:24,600 --> 00:21:28,500
He doesn't try to take credit
for something he doesn't do.

223
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:38,000
You want to have hundreds, thousands
of people working on the kernel-

224
00:21:38,100 --> 00:21:41,500
-at the same time. But you
don't want to have all these people-

225
00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:43,500
-stepping on
each other's toes all the time-

226
00:21:43,600 --> 00:21:48,500
-because that way most of
the time will be spent on resolving-

227
00:21:48,600 --> 00:21:53,500
-conflicts between people and
you just have flame wars all the time.

228
00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:58,000
I used to think that there was this
hierarchy where I was at the top-

229
00:21:58,100 --> 00:22:00,000
-and they were my lieutenants-

230
00:22:01,500 --> 00:22:06,500
-and I don't think it's that way
anymore. It's more like a web of trust-

231
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:12,000
-where I have people I trust,
and they have people they trust.

232
00:22:12,500 --> 00:22:16,500
Well, there are lots of things
that motivate developers!

233
00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:21,000
There's artistic pride, the satisfaction that
you get from doing good craftsman-like-

234
00:22:21,500 --> 00:22:25,500
-work. There's the
idealist feeling of being part of-

235
00:22:25,600 --> 00:22:29,500
-something larger
and more important than you are.

236
00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:34,000
There's a desire to help
the world and see that solutions happen.

237
00:22:34,500 --> 00:22:37,500
In the absence of monetary rewards
most people, most of the time,-

238
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:40,500
-are playing for a kind of
reputation reward among their peers.

239
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:48,000
One strength of
the Linux development world-

240
00:22:48,500 --> 00:22:54,500
-is that practically every software
author can be contacted directly by email.

241
00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:01,000
Ted Ts'o was crucial in
the spread of Linux in the United States.

242
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:06,000
To be fair, it's very easy to say:

243
00:23:06,100 --> 00:23:09,000
"If we were in charge
we wouldn't do these things".

244
00:23:09,500 --> 00:23:12,000
But then again, we're not getting
all these email messages saying:

245
00:23:12,100 --> 00:23:13,900
"Please, let me add this new feature!"

246
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:17,000
So I don't know what I would
actually do if I were really in charge.

247
00:23:17,500 --> 00:23:21,500
Dave Miller is a
maintainer who reviews changes-

248
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:24,500
-that developers
want to make in the kernel.

249
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:32,000
He is like a funnel between
the contributors and "the king" Linus.

250
00:23:32,500 --> 00:23:36,500
The way that we work is...
You can talk all day about a great idea-

251
00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:39,000
-or a solution
to a problem, or something that-

252
00:23:39,100 --> 00:23:42,400
-you think is an interesting feature
for Linux to have but you gotta-

253
00:23:42,500 --> 00:23:47,500
-show us something concrete.
Show me a piece of code that does that.

254
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:52,000
Something that's tangible that I can
test myself so I can try it out and I can-

255
00:23:52,500 --> 00:23:55,500
-think about what it is. Instead of just
talking abstractly about a topic all day.

256
00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:01,500
Alan Cox, a "renaissance hacker"
is the closest collaborator to Linus.

257
00:24:01,600 --> 00:24:03,900
His right hand man.

258
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:07,000
"What is Alan doing...
The other side of the story"

259
00:24:07,500 --> 00:24:13,500
To me code has more in common
with i.e. poetry or some kinds of writing.

260
00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:18,000
The beauty of it is in the structure,
in putting ideas across one at a time-

261
00:24:18,100 --> 00:24:20,000
-in a clear way.

262
00:24:20,500 --> 00:24:24,500
So a good piece of code you read
without comments and it's immediately-

263
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:29,000
-obvious why it's been written, how
it's elegant. So you're looking for code-

264
00:24:29,100 --> 00:24:34,500
-which is both clean and elegant. But also
doesn't rely on clever programming tricks,-

265
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:39,000
-doesn't make assumptions
which may not be true in the future.

266
00:24:39,100 --> 00:24:42,500
Because the last thing we want to do
is having much code in the Linux kernel-

267
00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:44,900
-which requires large
amounts of effort to keep it working.

268
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:50,000
We want code which will just
continue to work, and work forever.

269
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:58,000
Having led the Linux project
for five years in Helsinki-

270
00:24:58,500 --> 00:25:02,500
-Linus was recruited to
Silicon Valley, California.

271
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:07,000
He wanted to see the other side
of the world, the world of commerce,-

272
00:25:07,100 --> 00:25:09,000
-not just the academic side.

273
00:25:09,500 --> 00:25:13,500
"Edward Helmore talks to Linus Torvalds,
Silicon Valley's brightest new star"

274
00:25:14,600 --> 00:25:18,000
<i>You're quite an un-orthodox figure in
the Silicon Valley world.</i>

275
00:25:18,100 --> 00:25:19,400
<i>What do they make of you there?</i>

276
00:25:19,500 --> 00:25:22,500
You're not taking their
crazy commercial part, if you like.

277
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:20,000
"TRANSMETA"

278
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:25,000
Linus started to work for
a company called "Transmeta"-

279
00:26:25,500 --> 00:26:29,500
A little Linux company,
but a mysterious business-

280
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:32,600
-that didn't want to tell,
for many years, what it was up to.

281
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:38,000
And paradoxically a
closed source code company.

282
00:26:38,500 --> 00:26:43,500
The deal was that Linus could
still concentrate on developing Linux.

283
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:51,000
I have been forced into trying
to be a poster boy for Linux-

284
00:26:51,500 --> 00:26:56,000
-and actually the whole
open source community at large,-

285
00:26:56,100 --> 00:27:00,100
-even though I wasn't even
the person who started open source.

286
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:09,000
There's no single person that
represents the whole story-

287
00:27:09,500 --> 00:27:13,500
-and there's no single starting point.
I mean, it's like the bamboo:

288
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:16,000
You don't know where
it starts or where it ends.

289
00:27:16,500 --> 00:27:20,500
I don't think that this movement
is actually new at all.

290
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:22,600
It's been around for a long time.

291
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:28,000
Even in the 1970's, the whole
attitude that we had around UNIX-

292
00:27:28,500 --> 00:27:32,500
-even though technically
it wasn't open source, it wasn't free,-

293
00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:37,000
-because you did need to
go get this license from AT&T.

294
00:27:37,500 --> 00:27:42,500
Since that was not an issue
generally, you could share things freely.

295
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:48,000
When you run a program, typically
you run the executable form-

296
00:27:48,500 --> 00:27:53,500
-which is a series of numbers and
nobody can make any sense of them.

297
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:57,000
Only a computer can understand them.
That's what they're for.

298
00:27:57,500 --> 00:28:02,500
Those numbers are the form of a program
that the computer can understand.

299
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:07,000
For humans to figure out what they
mean is very hard. When we write software-

300
00:28:07,500 --> 00:28:13,500
-we write it as source code, and it
looks sort of like algebra. That's the form-

301
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:17,000
-that you can
understand if you're a programmer.

302
00:28:17,500 --> 00:28:22,500
To help you figure out there
are usually lots and lots of comments-

303
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:27,000
-which are explanations that are put into
the source code to help other people-

304
00:28:27,100 --> 00:28:30,400
-figure out why the
program is written the way it is.

305
00:28:30,500 --> 00:28:36,500
If you get just the executables, which is
what Microsoft will probably give you-

306
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:42,000
-even if you had the freedom to make
changes you could never figure out-

307
00:28:42,100 --> 00:28:44,400
-what changes to make.
It's too hard!

308
00:28:44,500 --> 00:28:47,500
For the freedom to change the
software to be practical, and usable,-

309
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:50,600
-you gotta have the source code.

310
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:57,000
If you really look at the project...
As I said, Linus developed the kernel-

311
00:28:57,500 --> 00:29:01,500
-but I think that the most
interesting part here is really-

312
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:03,900
-Richard Stallman began the movement.

313
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:06,000
Have you heard
of Richard Stallman?

314
00:29:06,500 --> 00:29:10,500
He wanted everyone to have the rights
to use the software, to copy the software-

315
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:14,000
-without breaking any laws.
To make changes, distribute them,-

316
00:29:14,100 --> 00:29:16,000
-enhance the software. He wanted to
give people rights!

317
00:29:16,500 --> 00:29:20,500
When he decided to overthrow corrupt
American capitalism in the IT industry-

318
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:25,000
-he quit his job
and continued coding.

319
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:30,000
<i>Join us now
and share the software</i>

320
00:29:30,100 --> 00:29:33,100
MIT,
Camebridge, Massachusetts

321
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:37,200
<i>You'll be free,
hackers, you'll be free</i>

322
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:56,500
I tend to think of things in terms
of justice, freedom and ethics.

323
00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:01,000
I announced the idea
in November 1983-

324
00:30:01,500 --> 00:30:06,500
-but it was in Januari 1984
that I quit my job at MIT-

325
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:10,000
-to start developing
a free operating system-

326
00:30:10,500 --> 00:30:13,900
-to which I gave
the name "GNU".

327
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:21,000
This is "GNU General Public License"
and of course the kernel is under GPL...

328
00:30:21,500 --> 00:30:24,900
"Free software", I should explain,
refers to freedom, not price.

329
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:30,000
It's unfortunate that the word "free",
in english, is ambiguous-

330
00:30:30,100 --> 00:30:32,400
-it has a number
of different meanings.

331
00:30:32,500 --> 00:30:37,500
One of them means "zero price",
but another meaning is "freedom".

332
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:44,000
So think of "free speech",
not "free beer".

333
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:54,000
There's a similarity between
the folk process where a poem-

334
00:30:54,500 --> 00:30:58,500
-or a song or a story
can get refined and reshaped-

335
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:03,000
-by one teller or singer
after another-

336
00:31:03,500 --> 00:31:08,500
-and the way
free software gets improved.

337
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:18,000
You'll often find cases where a free
program is being developed now by-

338
00:31:18,500 --> 00:31:22,500
-a group of people who
include none of the original developers.

339
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:28,000
In 1991 we had almost finished
the GNU system.

340
00:31:28,500 --> 00:31:35,500
Our goal was to make an OS, like
UNIX, but entirely free software.

341
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:40,000
This complete operating system
required many different components-

342
00:31:40,500 --> 00:31:45,500
By 1991 we had
almost all of those components.

343
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:50,000
Many of them we had written,
and many others we had found-

344
00:31:50,100 --> 00:31:54,100
-somebody else had written it for
his own purposes but it did the job.

345
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:57,500
And so we pressed it
into service as a part of GNU.

346
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:03,000
One major component was still missing:
the component called the "kernel".

347
00:32:03,500 --> 00:32:07,500
So it was very useful
that Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel.

348
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:14,000
At that point, combining his kernel,
Linux, with the larger GNU system-

349
00:32:14,500 --> 00:32:18,500
-produced a complete
runnable system that-

350
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:21,600
-you could actually
put onto your PC and run.

351
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:29,000
So once Linux was developed
the GNU system in effect was completed!

352
00:32:29,500 --> 00:32:34,500
It began to catch on in
popularity, but at the same time-

353
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:38,600
-an unfortunate thing happened.
The people who were using-

354
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:42,000
-the GNU system didn't
realize it was the GNU system.

355
00:32:42,500 --> 00:32:48,500
So they began calling the
whole combination "Linux"-

356
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:51,000
-and that confusion spread.

357
00:32:51,500 --> 00:32:55,500
As a result, it's very hard
for us in the GNU project-

358
00:32:56,000 --> 00:33:01,000
-to call the user's attention
to the ethical and political issues.

359
00:33:01,500 --> 00:33:05,500
<i>Hoarders can
get piles of money</i>

360
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:12,000
<i>That is true, hackers,
that is true</i>

361
00:33:12,500 --> 00:33:16,500
<i>But they cannot
help their neighbor</i>

362
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:21,000
<i>That's not good, hackers,
that's not good</i>

363
00:33:21,500 --> 00:33:27,500
Most computer science in the USA comes
traditionally from military background-

364
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:29,600
-and defense spending.

365
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:36,000
Perhaps it isn't any more quirky that
nowadays the "free software" movement-

366
00:33:36,500 --> 00:33:40,500
-finds room both for
Richard Stallman and libertarian ideals.

367
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:45,000
Many saw free software also
as a new way of making money-

368
00:33:45,100 --> 00:33:47,100
-and needed a less radical concept.

369
00:33:47,500 --> 00:33:50,500
Enter: open source.

370
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,000
"I want you to be an
open source developer"

371
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:02,000
We looked at the history
of advocacy in what at the time was-

372
00:34:02,100 --> 00:34:05,100
-still mostly called the "free software"
movement and we concluded-

373
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:06,900
-that it hadn't worked!

374
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:12,000
That in fact the rhetoric and the tactics
used by Richard Stallman and the-

375
00:34:12,500 --> 00:34:15,500
-Free Software Foundation had left us
worse off than we were when we started.

376
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:21,000
The term "open source" doesn't
really imply the political issues-

377
00:34:21,500 --> 00:34:26,500
-like it used to and the
"free software" term still does.

378
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,000
There's now a second movement,
the "open source" movement-

379
00:34:30,500 --> 00:34:34,500
-where they consider
only the practical benefits.

380
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:40,000
They refuse, and I mean
that literally... they carefully avoid-

381
00:34:40,500 --> 00:34:46,500
-the issues of principle, freedom, ethics
and making a good society to live in.

382
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:51,000
That kind of language is
implicitly threatening to people-

383
00:34:51,500 --> 00:34:57,500
-whose day-to-day concerns are: "how
do I increase my shareholder value?",-

384
00:34:57,600 --> 00:34:59,600
-"how do I keep
control over my business?"

385
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:05,000
How do I address my
actual down-to-earth problems?

386
00:35:05,100 --> 00:35:09,000
When you walk into their offices and say
"you should use all open source for your-

387
00:35:09,500 --> 00:35:15,500
-business because sharing is good
and hoarding is evil" - it doesn't work!

388
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:21,000
I am not against business.
I don't believe in abolishing business.

389
00:35:21,100 --> 00:35:26,900
I do business myself. But I believe
business should not dominate all of life.

390
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:33,000
The rules of society should not
be chosen primarily to please business.

391
00:35:33,500 --> 00:35:38,500
Early in 1998 the majority usage in
the community went from "free software"-

392
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:45,000
-to "open source" in six weeks flat.
In the late spring or early summer of 1998.

393
00:35:45,500 --> 00:35:50,500
That told me that there had been huge
pent-up demand in the community-

394
00:35:50,500 --> 00:35:54,500
-for a way of explaining what we
were doing that was more effective.

395
00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:59,000
The whole attitude in the
trade press and the investor community-

396
00:35:59,100 --> 00:36:01,100
-completely turned around!

397
00:36:02,500 --> 00:36:08,500
The same people who had spent years
sneering dismissively at "free software"-

398
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:13,000
-and talking about
sandal-wearing freaks with long hair...

399
00:36:13,500 --> 00:36:19,500
Those very same people within a year
were falling all over themselves to write-

400
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:23,000
-laudatory articles about the wonders
of open source and peer review.

401
00:36:23,500 --> 00:36:26,500
-and this is really funny
because it was the same software-

402
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:29,600
-and in most
cases the same people!

403
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,000
"Robin Hood of the nerds"

404
00:36:33,500 --> 00:36:36,500
"Martin Luther, meet Linus Torvalds"

405
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:43,000
<i>Linux happened without
the help of people with deep pockets-</i>

406
00:36:43,100 --> 00:36:45,100
<i>-or even despite the help.</i>

407
00:36:45,500 --> 00:36:51,500
<i>How can we keep from destroying the
magic by pouring all this money into Linux?</i>

408
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,000
When Linux started
to become commercialized-

409
00:36:54,500 --> 00:36:59,500
-people said: "oh well, we'd like to
keep it as our own little project".

410
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,000
"Nobody should be
making any money off it".

411
00:37:02,500 --> 00:37:08,500
Well, in the real world people make
money off things. The US is a capitalistic-

412
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:11,600
-society and
Europe is a capitalistic society.

413
00:37:11,700 --> 00:37:16,900
In order for
companies to start using Linux-

414
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:22,500
-they wanna have somebody sitting
there, who can give them support,-

415
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:25,000
-who can sell them the hardware.

416
00:37:25,100 --> 00:37:31,100
And these people who sell this hardware
and support are going to make money.

417
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,000
Not everyone
of us is a hacker.

418
00:37:37,500 --> 00:37:43,500
Actually, very few of us would take the
effort to download Linux from the net.

419
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:49,000
Even fewer will tackle with the
code itself in order to improve it.

420
00:37:49,500 --> 00:37:53,500
Though, Linux was
hard to use, customers valued strongly-

421
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:57,600
-its reliability
and open source code.

422
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:03,000
There was an opportunity
for companies with new visions.

423
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,000
"Red Hat"

424
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:16,000
For Red Hat, it wasn't
important that we ship a better-

425
00:38:16,100 --> 00:38:19,100
-operating system than
Microsoft's or Sun Microsystems'-

426
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:22,500
It becomes really important
that we ship an operating system-

427
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:25,600
-that solves a problem for our
customers that they cannot solve-

428
00:38:25,700 --> 00:38:29,700
-using the traditional
proprietary "binary only" software.

429
00:38:30,500 --> 00:38:33,500
We were recognizing
what we were doing was we were-

430
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:35,900
-building technology
and then giving it away!

431
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:39,000
So we said: "Well, how do
you make money doing this?"

432
00:38:40,500 --> 00:38:43,500
Of course, we would go to California,
to Silicon Valley, and everyone said:

433
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:46,600
"Well, you cannot make
money in the software business-

434
00:38:46,700 --> 00:38:49,400
-by giving your technology away".

435
00:38:49,500 --> 00:38:53,500
We would come back and talk to our
customers and we realized the only thing-

436
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:57,900
-that kept our customers loyal
was that we did give away our technology.

437
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:03,000
For the very first time they had control
over the technology they're using.

438
00:39:03,100 --> 00:39:07,100
The real value in most software products
is the active maintainence down the line-

439
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:10,200
-the continuing support
relationship between the vendor and you.

440
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:14,000
That's what gives software
fundamentally the characteristics of-

441
00:39:14,500 --> 00:39:17,500
-the service industry rather
than the manufacturing industry.

442
00:39:20,500 --> 00:39:24,000
Linux is flourishing in the
Internet server appliance area.

443
00:39:25,500 --> 00:39:29,500
But because there has not been an
easy-to-use software for home users-

444
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:34,000
-it has only a small
margin of the desktop market.

445
00:39:35,500 --> 00:39:41,500
The GNOME project, with its
graphical interface tries to fill that gap.

446
00:39:43,500 --> 00:39:49,000
But hacker elitism
still seems to follow Linux.

447
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:54,000
Do you see who's here?
It's a penguin!

448
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:57,500
-It's Tux, actually...
-Hi, Tux!

449
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:03,000
<i>When Linus Torvalds makes
millionaires and billionaires-</i>

450
00:40:03,100 --> 00:40:09,000
<i>Bill Gates' hair turns grey...</i>

451
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:13,000
Microsoft has a very traditional model:

452
00:40:13,100 --> 00:40:17,000
They make closed source code,
they put it on a CD, they sell that.

453
00:40:17,500 --> 00:40:20,500
They take on all the
burden of development themselves.

454
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:22,500
Everything goes back through them.

455
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:28,000
Once you're in that business
it's very hard to change your culture.

456
00:40:28,500 --> 00:40:32,500
It's very hard to change your business
to one where you cooperate.

457
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:39,000
It's easier to make money
off closed source products-

458
00:40:39,500 --> 00:40:43,500
-if you don't need, or
you have the huge market share.

459
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:47,000
So, for example, Microsoft
does not have a huge incentive-

460
00:40:47,100 --> 00:40:50,000
-to open source
their code right now.

461
00:40:50,500 --> 00:40:53,500
And it would probably cut
into their profits, so I don't think-

462
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:55,500
-they're gonna do it,
or at least not willingly.

463
00:40:56,000 --> 00:41:01,000
There's algorithms that you
may in fact want to keep proprietary.

464
00:41:01,500 --> 00:41:04,500
For example, I know of certain
compression algorithms that companies-

465
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:07,500
-have put a lot of work into.
For things like streaming media.

466
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:11,000
And they don't want people
to know how they do that -

467
00:41:11,100 --> 00:41:13,000
-because it's exactly how they
do that that's the value of the product.

468
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:23,000
Fighting between Linus,
who's the leader of Linux, and-

469
00:41:23,100 --> 00:41:27,000
-Bill Gates who's the leader of Microsoft.

470
00:41:27,100 --> 00:41:30,000
It becomes
really personal.

471
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:38,000
Next, for our bizarre question:
"Whose lips are these?"

472
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:45,000
As an answer:
Bill Gates' lips telling another lie...

473
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:56,000
The acceptance of Linux has
been helped enormously by the fact-

474
00:41:56,500 --> 00:42:01,500
-that people have known that
Linux exists through the news.

475
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:08,000
The "David versus Goliath" story helped
there, but I don't think it's particularly true.

476
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:13,000
"Microsoft's Ballmer
claims Linux is communism"

477
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:18,000
-You are a socialist...?

478
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:20,000
-That's one of the labels
that people put on me.

479
00:42:20,100 --> 00:42:21,100
-Is that true?

480
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:26,000
It's not a secret that I was a
left wing radical in the late 1960's.

481
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:34,000
Students' UN organization was
behind most demonstrations.

482
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:40,000
My personal belief system is
more one of personal honour.

483
00:42:40,500 --> 00:42:47,500
I don't care what anybody else does...
I want to do what I feel is right.

484
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:55,000
Linus keeps a very strict
distance to politics.

485
00:42:56,000 --> 00:43:00,000
I think he suffered slightly
in his earliest childhood-

486
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:06,000
-as his father was so active politically.

487
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:10,000
It is also about
having a social conscience-

488
00:43:10,500 --> 00:43:15,500
-and if you call that socialism
then, yeah, I guess I'm socialist...

489
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:24,000
He is radical within a very restricted
area, where he sets the limits himself.

490
00:43:24,500 --> 00:43:31,500
He is very reluctant
to take part in fuzzy political discourse-

491
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:36,000
-and there's the difference
between the pragmatist-

492
00:43:36,500 --> 00:43:41,500
-who wants to work with concrete
stuff and not let the steam-

493
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:49,000
-go out through his ears,
like we used to do in the 1960's.

494
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:56,000
This is a community. You can take
but you must give back!

495
00:43:56,500 --> 00:43:59,500
I am very pleased to
announce to you today-

496
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:03,100
-the winner of this year's
IDG/Linus Torvalds award is: Debian.

497
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:13,000
It's good that the Linux community has
been fairly positive towards new things,-

498
00:44:13,100 --> 00:44:15,100
-including the commercial aspects.

499
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:19,200
Hi, I'm from Brazil, and
I'd like to know what can we do-

500
00:44:19,300 --> 00:44:21,300
-to bring you to Brazil in May next year?

501
00:44:21,500 --> 00:44:24,500
-Hey, are you coming to the
VA party wednesday night?

502
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:26,600
-I will almost certainly
be there, yes. But I need to go now...

503
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:31,000
-I'm hearing that you're going shooting?
-You come with us, man!

504
00:44:31,100 --> 00:44:32,100
-Nooo...

505
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:44,300
A lot of communities worry that these big
enterprises, these big commercial vendors-

506
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:46,400
-are not going to be able to
give back to the community.

507
00:44:46,500 --> 00:44:53,500
The thing is that people expect other
people to be nice and take care of things-

508
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:57,600
-and I don't think that is true,
and I don't think that it should be true-

509
00:44:57,700 --> 00:45:04,500
-and I think that the power of Linux
is that even if nobody else helps you-

510
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:09,600
-an inch of the way, you
still have your own copy of Linux-

511
00:45:09,700 --> 00:45:13,400
-and you still have your own
power to do whatever you want...

512
00:45:13,500 --> 00:45:17,900
I want to avoid the politics of Linux.

513
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:25,000
I want to be somebody that everybody
agrees is a nice guy and he doesn't bite!

514
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:30,000
-One last question?
-Sure!

515
00:45:31,500 --> 00:45:32,500
-I'm from India.

516
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:34,900
Do you get a lot of developers
from India contributing to the kernel?

517
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:36,000
Not that many.

518
00:45:36,100 --> 00:45:39,900
What is the message that you would like
to give them so that you get more of them.

519
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:43,000
I think one of the
problems is just infrastructure.

520
00:45:43,100 --> 00:45:47,200
They don't even necessarily have Internet
access, or have very slow access.

521
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:54,600
I think that people are maybe not used
to do this collaboration on the Internet.

522
00:45:53,500 --> 00:45:56,000
They're kind of nervous, right?

523
00:45:56,100 --> 00:45:59,600
Any message you wanna give them to
motivate them to get more developers?

524
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:05,000
I don't know what the issues are in
India, but there are going to be issues.

525
00:46:05,100 --> 00:46:09,100
Like local issues that
Indians want to be able to do things-

526
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:14,200
-that the American
continent doesn't care about at all.

527
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:19,000
And I think that's really
motivational when somebody says:

528
00:46:19,100 --> 00:46:22,500
"Hey, I can solve this!
I can make my own version of Linux-

529
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:27,000
-and it will be better
for me as an Indian or whatever person".

530
00:46:27,500 --> 00:46:33,500
And that's how you should be motivated,
and whatever I say you should not care!

531
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:41,000
Thank you very much!

532
00:46:41,100 --> 00:46:46,500
-You come down to India next time...
-I will try to...

533
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:51,000
Do you want to take a
picture for a Dutch magazine?

534
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:55,000
Are you planning on
coming to the Netherlands?

535
00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:04,000
The real value of Linux may be some-
where else than knocking Microsoft out.

536
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:11,000
Linux was designed to run on a cheap
hardware and to solve common problems.

537
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:18,500
If you are poor it is a
real alternative, free of charge.

538
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:24,000
The Linux project started
in Europe and the United States.

539
00:47:24,500 --> 00:47:28,500
But now, free software
allows it to find ever more-

540
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:31,000
-new programmers
from new sources-

541
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:36,000
-from regions where
computing is still in its infancy.

542
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:43,000
Beijing, China

543
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:51,000
China is behind the developed
countries in the IT industry.

544
00:47:51,500 --> 00:47:54,500
The gap is big and
we try to catch up as fast we can.

545
00:47:54,600 --> 00:47:58,500
During this we have to borrow
from other countries' experiences.

546
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:02,000
We put a great importance
on the operating system.

547
00:48:02,500 --> 00:48:06,500
We did some
development work based on UNIX-

548
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:10,000
Due to tight market control
we were not able to succeed.

549
00:48:10,500 --> 00:48:13,500
Linux provides us
with a very good opportunity

550
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:18,500
-and a base to learn
from advanced technology.

551
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:24,000
"The Chinese Red Army
delighted with Linux"

552
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:33,000
I think that this is the greatest
transfer of wealth we may have ever seen-

553
00:48:33,100 --> 00:48:37,100
-between the industrialized
rich north, and put Europe and-

554
00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:42,200
-the United States together
in that, and the third world!

555
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:05,000
It's the open source.

556
00:49:05,500 --> 00:49:10,500
I think this is
important to many people.

557
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:16,000
I like philosophy, and I like to analyze
matters from a philosophic perspective.

558
00:49:16,500 --> 00:49:20,500
The open source is in
accordance with the spirit of science-

559
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:24,000
-the free and unrestricted
access to information.

560
00:49:24,500 --> 00:49:27,500
Nothing should be hidden.
That's my first impression of Linux.

561
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:38,000
The spirit could be
expanded to other fields.

562
00:49:38,500 --> 00:49:44,500
I never feel that this
only applies in the computer field.

563
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:52,000
You have one of the most privileged
classes in capitalism: programmers!

564
00:49:52,100 --> 00:49:55,100
They can make so much
money from working as programmers-

565
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:58,400
-that they have the time
to devote to their own hobbies.

566
00:49:58,500 --> 00:50:02,000
Programmers like Alan Cox,
they could name their price!

567
00:50:02,500 --> 00:50:05,500
Here are these people who
are at the top of the heap, and through-

568
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:09,600
-the structure of transfer of intellectual
property they've come up with,-

569
00:50:09,700 --> 00:50:12,700
-they're transferring that wealth.

570
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:15,800
It is socialism in action,
even if the libertarians-

571
00:50:15,900 --> 00:50:20,900
-are horrified
whenever that is mentioned.

572
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:40,000
Open source projects have been
compared to the way science is created.

573
00:50:40,100 --> 00:50:42,500
Science in itself
doesn't make money-

574
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:48,000
The wealth comes as
the result of applications.

575
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:53,000
For the open source
hackers developing Linux-

576
00:50:53,100 --> 00:50:59,000
-has traditionally been a science-
like voluntary project. A hobby.

577
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:05,500
Eventually, the best
Linux hackers were enlisted.

578
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:12,500
In 1999, during the dot-com boom,
some of the Linux companies went public.

579
00:51:13,000 --> 00:51:17,500
Wall Street announced record-
breaking value for Linux stock.

580
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:22,000
Of course it didn't last,
but for a period of time-

581
00:51:22,100 --> 00:51:26,500
-some Linux hackers
were filthy rich - on paper.

582
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:32,000
Just about everyone who
was a core developer before-

583
00:51:32,100 --> 00:51:35,100
-all this whoopla about people
making money doing Linux-

584
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:39,500
-have kept to their
values in taking these jobs.

585
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:44,000
Most of the ones I keep in contact with,
have a very crucial position and are-

586
00:51:44,100 --> 00:51:47,400
-pretty much doing all of the Linux work
they were doing before they had the job-

587
00:51:47,500 --> 00:51:53,500
-with the same levels of freedom, as well.
I still got changes from people every day-

588
00:51:54,000 --> 00:52:00,000
-I still submitted them to Linus, the
same way I always did before the IPO.

589
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:05,000
Some of us are driving nicer cars than
beforehand. That's the only difference.

590
00:52:05,100 --> 00:52:08,100
Maybe we're eating
a little bit more sushi.

591
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:13,400
There are some people who got lucky,
joined the right company at the right time.

592
00:52:13,500 --> 00:52:20,500
Managed to participate in the IPO
lottery and there are some people who-

593
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:25,000
-got millions of dollars, and there are
some people who got billions of dollars!

594
00:52:25,100 --> 00:52:30,100
Did those people actually contribute more
to the company than those other people?

595
00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:33,200
In some cases they just
happened to contribute the right-

596
00:52:33,300 --> 00:52:35,300
-amount of investment
money at the right time.

597
00:52:35,400 --> 00:52:39,500
I think that's a generic problem that's
not unique to the open source community.

598
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:45,000
I don't know if we actually
have a good solution for that.

599
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:51,000
Part of what I like about
Silicon Valley is just that it's so dynamic,-

600
00:52:51,100 --> 00:52:53,100
-and you can do anything here.

601
00:52:53,100 --> 00:52:58,200
And even the money-grabbing
approach. Even if it's slightly tasteless-

602
00:52:58,300 --> 00:53:03,000
-especially when you come from Europe,
it's a really good motivational factor.

603
00:53:03,500 --> 00:53:07,500
It's a really good way
of getting things done.

604
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:12,000
Has it changed me?
I assume so.

605
00:53:12,500 --> 00:53:16,500
I'm not the same
person I was when I moved-

606
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:23,000
-but I don't think it's made me all that
more money-conscious than I used to be.

607
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:33,000
2001 - Imagined by Stanley Kubrick.

608
00:53:33,500 --> 00:53:38,500
In the most ambitious and
grotesque PR stunt in history-

609
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:44,000
-suicide hijackers blitz America
with far-reaching consequences.

610
00:53:44,500 --> 00:53:48,500
IT recession
affects also open source.

611
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:54,000
No longer does Linus have to act
in public all the time as an enlightened-

612
00:53:54,100 --> 00:54:00,500
-philosopher ruler, harassed by the media.
With the coolness of Linux still intact-

613
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:04,000
-the phenomenon
disappears into gadgets.

614
00:54:04,100 --> 00:54:09,900
Invisible pieces of technology for
households and entertainment industry.

615
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:16,000
Gradually, many of us turn into
Linux users when the code infiltrates-

616
00:54:16,100 --> 00:54:20,500
-our clocks, toasters
and mobile phones.

617
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:27,000
As for bigger ideals, it could be one of the
greatest missed opportunities of our times-

618
00:54:27,500 --> 00:54:33,500
-if free software
liberated nothing but code.

619
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:47,000
There's no question that
development of technology-

620
00:54:47,100 --> 00:54:50,100
-is just going to make
Linux obsolete at some point.

621
00:54:50,200 --> 00:54:54,500
The question is just:
"How long will it take?"

622
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:07,000
Will it be in 5 years, or
15 years or will it be 50 years?

623
00:55:07,100 --> 00:55:11,500
I think one of the powers of
open source is that in 50 years-

624
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:16,000
-the next operating system
that's the best at the time-

625
00:55:16,500 --> 00:55:22,500
-will be able to take advantage
of the source base that Linux had.

626
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:27,000
The source code itself is
going to be the memory of Linux-

627
00:55:27,500 --> 00:55:31,900
-and people can always
use that as a kind of blueprint.

628
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:37,000
But there's more in that.
There's also the intangible issues-

629
00:55:37,100 --> 00:55:41,500
-about why things
were designed a certain way.

630
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:48,000
I think those are out
there even if I weren't out there...

631
00:55:57,000 --> 00:56:00,000
The Code - Story of Linux ©2001