“Linus Torvalds is very powerful in my opinion. The media has
his attention. The hacker community has his attention. He is the
uberguru of the GNU Linux kernel development.”
“Stanford professor Larry Lessig says that code is law.
According to Lessig, the architectures of cyberspace are as
important as the law in defining and defeating the liberties of the
Net. If code is law, then Linus Torvalds must be the legislator. Is
Linus Torvalds too powerful?”
“A columnist in the Swedish equivalent of Computerworld argued
yesterday that Linus Torvalds should resign from the throne of GNU
Linux development. He should, according to the columnist Jesper Ek
of Spider Education, be replaced by a consortium of IBM and Compaq
and other major players. This to ensure stability and to keep
deadlines that can’t be kept by “jolt drinking hackers.”