“Linus Torvalds kicked off the third LinuxWorld Expo with his
keynote address this morning at the Jacob Javits Center in New
York. Like the venue itself, Linus’s keynote was a little different
than usual.
“Scheduled for 9:30 a.m., the keynote didn’t get started until
nearly 10 as he waited for the crowd to pour into Javits and the
exhibition hall. The line appeared to be longer than the last one
in San Jose, but there were still seats left vacant when he took
the stage, both in the 200-seat press section and in the general
seating area.”
“One thing that made this Linus keynote different is that
instead of going through the usual slides-and-spiel and then
turning the session into a question-and-answer session, Linus went
through a list of questions that he had selected himself, after
having been asked them numerous times in the past.”
“The first question that Linus posed to himself was the spectre
of Linux fragmentation…”
“The next question went straight to the heart of many in the
audience: the issue of Linux and money, and the potential clash
between commercialism and traditional Linux values.”
“The third and final question Linus asked himself had to do with
the next release of the Linux kernel, version 2.4.”
“I’ve learned from earlier keynotes that it is important to pay
close attention to what Linus says. In San Jose last August, he
casually mentioned that Linux was seeing a lot of interest in the
embedded market. Since then, embedded Linux has popped up
everywhere… So I’m really looking forward to seeing the
benchmarks comparing Linux 2.4 and Microsoft Windows which Linus
mentioned.”