Two Great Linus Quotes
Here are two Linus quotes from a recent article in Informationweek -- Torvalds On Where Linux Is Headed In 2008:
And not only do we tend to support many different models of virtualization, but one telling detail may be that I am personally so totally uninterested in it, that I am really happy that I have almost nothing to do with any of them.
And I mention that as a strong point of open source! Why? Because it actually is a great example of what open source results in: one person's (or company's) particular interests don't end up being dominant. The fact that I personally think that virtualization isn't all that exciting means next to nothing.
...
But in the end, a lot of this is just a huge amount of individually small changes that may not be even interesting on their own - what is then really stunning is how big a difference all those small not-so-interesting changes make when you put them all together.
In other words, I'm a huge believer in the "99 % perspiration, 1% inspiration" rule. It's a lot of hard -- but happily, mostly interesting -- work, and there is seldom, if ever, any single big silver bullet.
Even though I took these two quotes out of the context of the original
article, they illustrate two points I agree with: (1) one
person or company shouldn't control the entire community, and (2) the
real value of community development comes over the long term and
results from many small contributions, not one big one. To me, these
are two issues facing the OpenSolaris community right now. The small
things matter a lot. They add up. And I think we miss that many times
because we are too focused on "Sun" in the community on the one hand
and the so-called "lack of leadership" on the other. There are no
silver bullets for OpenSolaris. And there's nothing to replace the
perspiration of doing the hard -- but interesting -- work.
Albeit it´s correct that small steps are the nature of community development, i would like a clearer vision of the future from leading developers. Answers to the questions: "Where are the weaknesses we want to solve? where are industry wide developments, we want to integrate? where are the strength we want to build on in 2008?" From this standpoint the interview of Linus was a little bit disappointing.
Posted by Joerg M. on November 26, 2007 at 11:19 PM JST #
Posted by c0t0d0s0.org on November 27, 2007 at 12:17 AM JST #
Hey,
So a team of people with some poll's/vote's on the OpenSolaris site that would survey what little things need to be fixed up would be a good project..
Like, for example; "How many of you would like wifi driver A B or C"
Then what ever gets the highs score would be the next target..
Just a idea,
Edward.
Posted by EdwardOCallaghan on November 27, 2007 at 01:01 AM JST #