Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust

When you posted about the original system kernel on Usenet in 1991 what did you think would happen to it?

I think your question assumes a level of planning that simply didn't really exist. It wasn't so much about me having any particular expectations of what would happen when I made the original kernel sources available: a lot of the impetus for releasing it was simply a kind of "hey, look at what I've done".

I was definitely not expecting people to help me with the project, but I was hoping for some feedback about what I'd done, and looking for ideas of what else people would think was a good idea.

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