[ Thanks to Byron Ray for this link.
]
“I was waiting in line to pick up my press badge at the first
Linuxworld conference back in March when I saw a familiar,
bespectacled face beside me. It was Linus Torvalds, the affable,
29-year-old creator of Linux, waiting patiently to register for the
show — waiting to register for his own show.”
“It’s this sort of unpretentious behavior that has helped
Torvalds emerge as an oddball figurehead here in Silicon Valley. In
a sea of egomaniacal IT executives hyping their companies — and
themselves — to the hilt, Torvalds has nurtured a humble,
understated presence that has made him the darling of the
open-source community, and helped Linux make a heady ascent towards
the IT mainstream.”
“Take his “keynote speech” at the most recent Linuxworld show
earlier this month. The young Finn had enough marketing ammunition
at hand to hype Linux to the moon: Every big IT firm on the planet
(apart from that one in Redmond) was proclaiming support for the
open-source OS. New research out that day showed Linux making real
headway in the business market. And with the help of distributor
Red Hat Software, Linux had jumped into the ever so sexy,
potentially lucrative world of the IPO.”