“The excitement really started on Monday the 15th, with
Linus Torvalds’ keynote speech at the Venetian Ballroom of the Las
Vegas Convention Center. Hundreds upon hundreds of us filled up a
vacated parking garage, waiting in line on the cement for hours in
hopes of seeing and hearing our leader. Finally, the lines
started moving and we packed into the enormous ballroom and fixed
our eyes on the stage. The announcer had such a tacky, Vegas voice
it was hard to hear what he was saying over the laughter, which
must be mentioned because Vegas is a genuinely strange city in the
middle of a desert wasteland and one must appreciate its sublime
tackiness.”
“Regardless, before we got to see Linus, we were subjected to a
canned routine from a Ziff-Davis executive who apparently thought
“Linux” was a company and its president was named “maddog”… If
there was a used-car game show, this guy would be perfect for it.
Nevertheless, once that was over, the immortal Jon “maddog” Hall
appeared on stage, and the first voice of reason that evening was
heard. He told the audience he thought of Linus as a son, and that
Linux is our operating system, that Linus has never called it his
operating system. Although maddog is one of the big Linux figures
and we could have listened to him for a bit longer, he was sagely
and brief; he knew why we were there, so perhaps he too was
impatient for the show to get started.”
“Finally, Linus walked on stage, and for a while he could say
very little over the applause and flash photography. Linus is what
Willy Loman wanted to be; not just liked, but well-liked, even
adored, idolized, and worshiped daily at personal shrines (for
example, by the Empeg development team) which no doubt can make a
person uncomfortable. He lives in a politically difficult
situation, a figurehead for our whole community, who must choose
his words carefully so as not to offend. We count on him to keep us
unified; we can rely on him not to behave strangely or take sides
in vicious feuds; and we respect his plans about the future of the
Linux kernel (thus avoiding the forking death of previous UNIX
communities). He navigates carefully, not siding against vi or GNU
Emacs, one distribution or another, commercial people or the free
idealists. Above all, he remains giving and cooperative and most
notably “humble”: not as in “never be humble, you’re not that
good”, but as one human being who treats other people as human
beings (which isn’t necessarily “humble” per se, more just
reasonable). And then there’s Linux, for which he is best
known.”