“Q: As a man with a full-time job at Transmeta,
is it becoming too much for you, in terms of energy and what you
can devote to development of the Linux kernel?
A: I’m lucky, or maybe I have just made the
right decisions in life. Transmeta has been very supportive. When I
said I needed to concentrate on getting [Linux version] 2.4.x out,
the people here basically asked me what Transmeta could do to make
it easier. And it does help that I’ve been doing this for 10 years.
…”
“Q: …your partners — Red Hat and other Linux
distributors — had their products ready to go in the fourth
quarter of 2000. Weren’t they upset when Linux 2.4’s release was
delayed?
A: So far, the vendor comments I’ve gotten have
been pretty philosophical. Many of them expected it to be even
later, actually, and I never got a complaint. Most of them seem to
have covered the kernel development fairly well, and I think they’d
have been as unhappy as I would have been if I had released 2.4.0
too early.”
“Q: How much pressure did you get from
Linux companies, whose profits were hanging in the balance until
2.4 shipped?
A: None at all, really. To some degree, I
got “what do you think the timing will be?” kinds of questions, but
absolutely no pressure. Nobody said “we’d really like it for the
Christmas season” or anything like that.”