Those of us who have been reading the Linux or FOSS press for more than a week or two have come to appreciate how ably Linus Torvalds has been able to master the use of English as his second language, especially when it comes to what used to be called “dirty words.” The fact is, on many a FOSS reporter’s keyboard the special characters located where uppercase numbers would be if numbers had uppercase, wouldn’t get any use at all if not for efforts to keep Mr. Torvalds’ prose fit for family consumption. We here at FOSS Force are particularly impressed with his mastery of the use of the “F” word.
Mainly he’s become known for his carefully worded rants to developers about some issue or another with the kernel. Hardly a week goes by when we don’t enjoy a midweek chuckle or two at the expense of some poor schmo programmer who’s been caught by Linux’s grand pooh-bah using a slang expression in C where a formal expression would work better.