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AUGUST 18, 2004
Linus Torvalds' Benevolent Dictatorship [Page 2 of 2] Q: What's your role today in the Linux phenomenon, and how is it different from your role in the past? A: What I do mostly is I'm a communications channel. I'm one of a couple of central points for discussions. I have all the patches come to me, though I have sub-lieutenants doing the programming work. I'm a meeting point, rather than a software engineer. I don't do much programming anymore. I don't decide what needs to be done. It's defined by what people need to get done and what they want to do. Getting it working together -- that's where I and other organizers come in. If I see something that needs more attention, I sometimes suggest something. If there's not enough effort going into a certain thing, it's usually because it's hard to get started on something new. Once somebody gets started, the others get into it. Occasionally I have to start a project and get it far enough along that it's self-sustaining, and then I pray for somebody to take over. My role has changed. It didn't happen at once. The things I could concentrate on have grown fewer and fewer, because I have to look at things so broadly. In the early days, I used to write user programs, not just the kernel. I did all the original application porting to Linux. But then I started to ask people to do it. Q: You're clearly the leader of the Linux movement, but what does that mean? How do you lead? Are you a benevolent dictator, as some have called you? A: To be honest, the fact that people trust you gives you a lot of power over people. Having another person's trust is more powerful than all other management techniques put together. I have no legal or explicit power. I only have the power of having people's trust -- but that's a lot of power. I am a dictator, but it's the right kind of dictatorship. I can't really do anything that screws people over. The benevolence is built in. I can't be nasty. If my baser instincts took hold, they wouldn't trust me, and they wouldn't work with me anymore. I'm not so much a leader, I'm more of a shepherd. Now all the kernel developers will read that and say, "He's comparing us to sheep." It's more like herding cats. Q: Describe the development organization and process. A: We don't have a formal process. But a lot of companies are doing Linux. Within them there are deadlines, when they want their own internal work done. They have become good at knowing how our system works. It's not time-based. We'll come in when we know that something is better than what was before. There's no global scheduling. The companies take what we produce when it's good enough, or they just say no. Q: How do you pick the core kernel contributors. How many are there? A: The lieutenants get picked. It's not me or any other leader who picks them. The programmers are very good at selecting leaders. There's no process for making somebody a lieutenant. But somebody who gets things done, shows good taste, and has good qualities -- people just start sending them suggestions and patches. I didn't design it this way. This happens because this is the way people work. It's very natural. Q: After SCO sued IBM, I understand that you changed the development process to lessen the likelihood that patented code will get into the kernel. What have you done? A: We have always had some written and unwritten rules about how people should behave on mailing lists and how they should send in patches, so we can use automated tools to evaluate the patches. The process grew out of practical reasons for doing things. Recently we made the path of who has touched the patch explicit. We have sign-off procedures. People who were involved sign off on their contribution and confirm that they have the legal right to offer it. So, if somebody has a question, we can look it up. We can see where the code came from and who did it. If somebody asks us, we can show them we did everything right. Q: How far can -- and will -- this go? Do you expect most software to be developed this way some day? A: I think much software will be developed this way. It's especially good for infrastructure -- stuff that affects everybody. The operating system is a classic example. It's the software you take for granted. Open source really shines in this situation. In the long run, you can't sanely compete with the open-source mentality for producing the software infrastructure. Q: How applicable are open-source methods outside of software? Is the nature of software and the culture in which it has developed unique in business? Or are other kinds of businesses or creative endeavors using some of the same methods? A: I think the method is the scientific method. The open-source people use it for software. So, engineering and science are all about the open-source method. It's mainly about knowledge and information. You can spread it without losing it yourself. Groklaw.net is the open-source mentality applied to legal research. There are encyclopedias -- a collection of a lot of information that's neutral. One project on the Web is Wikipedia. People have been playing around with using the open-source innovation model with arts and novels and even music. I have heard discussions, but I'm not a big believer. These things tend to be personal, and writing text is linear. It's hard to have more than one person working on it. Q: The U.S. has long been a leader in information-technology innovation. Is open source a threat to its national competitiveness? A: Open source is a tool anybody can use to innovate. It's a tool the U.S. can use or other countries can use. If you want to keep on the forefront of technology, you have to take advantage of the most powerful tools, and open source is one of them. Other countries will take full advantage of open source, and it allows them to innovate and leave the U.S. behind -- if it doesn't innovate, too.
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