Linus Torvalds - Just for Fun

Probably the most vexing thing in the whole process is giving up control and just accepting the fact that outsiders may actually know better. The other difficulty is finding a strong technical leader in the company. This has to be somebody who is trusted by everyone on two levels -- both a technical and a political level. It has to be someone who is able to acknowledge the fact that the project may have been flawed from the start. Instead of trying to hide from such problems, the leader must be able to convince everybody that the best thing to do is to go back and start over, which means breaking stuff. It's not a message people want to hear. However, coming from someone who commands respect, it's a message people will accept.

Given the nature of office politics and how corporations typically work, the technical lead person would have to be someone with a fairly strong personality. He or she should be somebody who likes working by email and who avoids taking sides. I wouldn't use the word "liaison," because that would imply there are two distinct sides here -- the inside camp and the outside camp. And that's not the way it should be. This technical lead person gets paid by the company to do open source. He or she knows, and everybody else knows, that this person is not paid to agree with his counterparts in the company, but simply to do the project. There's a danger with having the leader too closely associated with the company. Folks might trust his or her technical ability, but not the nontechnical judgment.

Is there a diplomat in the house?

It's like "Find me one honest man."

This is why I have tried so hard over the years to avoid getting involved with Linux companies. This is becoming increasingly critical now that the money is materializing. With so many dollars floating around, people start questioning your motivations. For me, it's helpful that I've been known as being neutral. You have no idea how important it is to me to maintain that neutrality. It drives me nuts.

Okay. You're right, I should stop preaching. Open source is not for everyone or every project or every corporation. But the more that people start taking stock of the success of Linux, the more they realize this isn't the knee-jerk rantings of idealistic, unwashed high-schoolers.

Open up anything, and the possibilities will follow. I've been talking about open source for as long as journalists have been asking me about it, which is basically the last five years. It used to be that you had to explain and explain what's so great about it. And, frankly, it felt like an endless trek. It was like trudging in mud.

People get it now.

"What about the burden of fame?" That's what some people will ask me. And let me tell you, the "burden" is not a burden at all. It's fun being famous, and famous people who say otherwise are just trying to be nice and make nonfamous people feel like they're better off. You're supposed to be humble about your fame, and complain about how it destroys your life.

But face it, everybody dreams of fame and riches. I know I did. As a teenager I wished to become a famous scientist. Albert Einstein, but better. Who doesn't? If not a scientist, then a racecar driver. Or a rock star. Or Mother Teresa. Or the President of the United States.

And actually, getting there was not at all painful. Sure, I may not be Albert Einstein but I feel comfortable about having actually made a difference, and about doing something meaningful. And getting recognized for it makes the whole thing all the better. So the next time you hear somebody complaining about fame and riches, ignore them. They're just doing it because it's what you're supposed to do.

So is it all good? Of course not. There are certainly downsides to being well-known. I don't have people recognize me in the streets (or at least not very often), but the huge amount of email I get is interspersed with the occasional message that is really hard to answer, and also hard to ignore. What do you say to somebody who asks you to give the eulogy for his dad that you never met? I never replied to that email, and I still feel a bit guilty about it. That was a very important thing for somebody, and to me it ended up being just an inconvenience.

Or how do you tell somebody who asks you to give a keynote speech at a conference that you really don't have the time or the inclination? How do you make people realize that you long ago stopped listening to phone-mail messages, without appearing to be an inconsiderate bastard? Which you really are, after all. It's not as if I end up caring all that deeply about every issue, just because I care deeply about the issue I'm known for: Linux.

Of course, eventually it becomes really easy to just say no. Or ignore the requests entirely; one of the reasons I love email is that it's so convenient and easy to ignore -- what's one more email in the few hundred I get every day? The medium is so far removed from the person that it very seldom gets personal enough to make you feel guilty about ignoring it. It happens (see above), but it doesn't happen very often. And even when you don't ignore it, saying "no" over email is a lot easier to do than in person or over the phone.

The problem is fundamentally one of the expectations people end up having about well-known people. And the fact that it's obviously not possible to live up to all the expectations while feeling like you should at least try to do so. That's party what made writing this book a pretty nerve-wracking experience -- trying to write a reasonably personal book, while at the same time not really disappointing people who expected something different.

And some of the expectations are downright silly. I often get the feeling that some people expect me to be a modern-day monk -- living a frugal life in solitude. All because I thought that making Linux open and freely available on the Internet was a good idea, and because I didn't take the traditional commercial approach to software. So then I get self-conscious and rather defensive about the fact that I actually enjoy spending money, and that I've finally upgraded my old Pontiac Grand Am to something more fun. [4] There's nothing wrong with a Pontiac Grand Am, and it's a fine car. It's 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. It's 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 car -- a much less practical BMW Z3. Remember -- "Just for Fun." That car is completely and utterly useless for anything but fun. And that's just the way I like it.

Which brings up the second question after the "burden of fame" one. Namely, "Will success spoil Linus (and/or Linux)?" Will I turn into a self-centered spoiled brat who writes books about himself because he likes seeing his name in print, and because it pays off his new useless car?

The answer, of course, is yes.

After all, take a person whose life-long philosophy has been to have fun and do something interesting, then add some money and fame, and what do you expect will happen? Instant philanthropist? I don't think so. Giving away money to charity really never even entered my mind until David actually asked the question during the making of this book. I looked at him blankly. "Shave the whales" was the first thing that came to my mind. Obviously I was not born to have great financial responsibility.

Does success change how you think about things? It does. Linux was a different animal when there were just fifty very technical users, as opposed to 25 million (or whatever the number is today) normal people who use it at least occasionally. And Linux was very different back when the only people working on it were people who did it entirely because it was fun and interesting -- with none of the commercial interests that are so obviously there today.