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Linus Moves To OSDL, Will Work On Kernel Full-Time
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jun 17, 2003 06:45 AM
from the send-linus-more-penguins-for-his-desk dept.
from the send-linus-more-penguins-for-his-desk dept.
worldwideweber writes "With the announcement of the release of the 2.5.72 version of the Linux kernel came the news that Linus Torvalds will be leaving Transmeta for OSDL to work on the linux kernel full-time. The email calls this a leave of absence for about one year." Update: 06/17 17:19 GMT by T : As many readers have pointed out, the length of Linus' leave is not actually specified in this email.
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Kernel Mailing List Email (Score:5, Informative)
To: Kernel Mailing List
Subject: Linux v2.5.72 and a move to OSDL
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:35:09 -0700 (PDT)
Ok, I waited too long for 2.5.71, so here's a more timely 2.5.72
release.
It's extra timely largely because the hash list poisoning found some
problems in the RPC code, making NFS break. Trond found and fixed the
breakage, so 2.5.72 should work fine in an NFS environment too. Let's
see if the list poisoning shows any other dodgy list users. Knock wood.
Also, Arnaldo has cleaned up a lot of the networking code to use the
generic hash lists, instead of the old ad-hoc net-specific list walking
code. That code has been tested pretty well, but please holler if you
see something.
Changelog for other details appended.
The other big news - well, for me personally, anyway - is that I've
decided to take a leave-of-absense after 6+ years at Transmeta to
actually work full-time on the kernel.
Transmeta has always been very good at letting me spend even an
inordinate amount of time on Linux, but as a result I've been feeling a
little guilty at just how little "real work" I got done lately. To fix
that, I'll instead be working at OSDL, finally actually doing Linux as
my main job.
[ I do not expect a huge amount of change as a result, testament to just
change to "torvalds@osdl.org" effective July 1st, but everybody is
trying to make the transfer as smooth as possible, so we'll make sure
that there will be sufficient address overlap etc to not cause any
problems ]
OSDL and Transmeta will have a joint official (read: "boring". You
should have seen the bio - that didn't make it - that I suggested for
myself for it
wanted to say thanks to Transmeta. It has been a special place to work
for, and hello to OSDL that I hope will be the same.
Snif. I'm actually all teary-eyed.
Linus
Breaking news ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Have the Chinese agreed to 'release' him from Transmeta?
(this last one hurts a bit)...
while extolling the Linux kernel, we used to say:
Hey, MS spends $5bn in R&D for a lousy OS. A single chappie named Linus maintains the entire Linux kernel in his spare time! Can't say that any more...
Anyways, all the best!
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, the Linux kernel supports many, many more platforms than Windows, has hundreds of features that Windows does not and handles hundreds of devices, filesystems, network topologies and tools that Windows has never added or given up on for lack of resources.
That the relatively small number of people maintaining Linux can do so without having to get rid of large portions of the OS is actually rather staggering. Just look at how hard it is for the BSD folks. They do a good job, and I don't belittle them at all. But, it takes a long time to add new features, and they are now in a perpetual mode of catch-up except in a few key areas that each of the BSDs focuses on and manages well.
Linus has managed Linux VERY well, and while many of his choices were controvercial, the end result has always been a platform that held together and held developers longer than any other project I've ever seen (on average, certainly some other projects like sendmail or bind have had key developers much longer).
Kudos to Linus and may Linux live long and prosper.
Parent
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
McDonald's is always hiring.
I mean, if this kid [mac.com] can get a job there, Linus might have a shot...
Parent
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well it seems fairly stable.
Parent
Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying not to be overly cynical here is a bit difficult. When Transmeta needed publicity they hired Linus which gave them un-rivaled, and often uncritical, coverage in the US which certainly will have helped in fund-raising. The initial visions and hype have not lived up to their expectations, and especially in the low power end of the market where ARM processors continue to dominate.
Now that Transmeta are trying to move into a more corporate sphere there is less demand for a posterboy like Linus.
Its great that Linus is dedicated to the Linux kernel full time, but how much of this is leaving through dedication (for a year) and how much is a result of disappointment at Transmeta not living up to its hype.
Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... (Score:5, Interesting)
the best you can ask for with a laptop is a ditributor who is prepared to sell it OS free, and knock a few £ (or $) off the asking price because of that.
Parent
Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the CPU isn't the biggest power hog in a notebook, and their cost/power/speed ratio wasn't much better than slowed down pentiums.
I'm actually very excited by their technology. But the only Crusoe laptops I've seen for sale have had tiny screens and huge price tags. It would be less expensive to buy an iBook/PowerBook and virtual PC than most Crusoe laptops.
Parent
Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Transmeta, Linus and Marketing... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
This comes at a surprising time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This comes at a surprising time... (Score:5, Interesting)
The motivation he gives for the move seems to involve more around "Transmeta has always been very good at letting me spend even an inordinate amount of time on Linux, but as a result I've been feeling a little guilty at just how little "real work" I got done lately"
If anything, if he's switching desks and work envirioment, it'll slow him down for a little bit to get settled in again
Parent
Re:This comes at a surprising time... (Score:5, Interesting)
A major rewrite is rumored to be in store for linux to give us some features that other OS's only dream of.
But these are purely the wil rumors that are running around and I give no credibility to.
Parent
Re:This comes at a surprising time... (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, should have added a link rightaway, so here [lwn.net] it is. I think Linus didn't enjoy the 2.4 series as much as development kernels, and maybe also understood that others could be better at the more boring side of evaluating bug fixes etc. (Hats off for that!) He might share the maintenance with Andrew Morton, or possibly completely hand it over by 2.6.0.
2.5 is the development branch, it doesnt need "maintaining".
Well, it's already mostly in maintenance status, i.e. waiting for bugfixes, more testers reporting and so on.
Parent
Again!!! (Score:5, Funny)
CmdrTaco was quoted and saying "Linus and this Shift-Insert stuff is getting WAY out of control".
Linus was unavailable to paste in a reply.
Re:Again!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Dunce Mcbribe was quoted as saying "The letters 'S' and 'O' are our intellectual property and we believe that they occur in the names of many businesses".
The world was to busy laughing to reply.
Parent
Re:Again!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Novell has sent a public reaction to SCO that they have used the letter 'O' for years in their name and are certain they didn't sell it to SCO.
Later today IBM is expected to state that they have a irevokable en perpetual license to use the 'I', 'B' and 'M' letters.
Further Linus has stated that he holds his parents responsible for cut&pasting the letter 'S' into his name shortly after birth: 'You can't blame me I was like a baby at that time!'
Jeroen
Parent
Linus career path (Score:5, Funny)
2. No profit
3. Get jealous; go to
4. No profit
5. Return to open source projects
6. No profit
Predicted itinerary... (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm actually all teary-eyed." (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"I'm actually all teary-eyed." (Score:5, Funny)
There's a leak in the Linus kernel, someone please post a patch.
Here ya go, mayteee! Arrrr!!
Parent
Guy is crazy! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Guy is crazy! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Slashdot effect (Score:5, Funny)
It made the NYTimes and Kudos to Transmeta (Score:5, Informative)
Kudos to Transmeta for hiring Linus in the first place ( even if they did transport him to the USA in reach of overlitigious bastards such as The SCO Group ) and supporting his work on Linux for so many years.
Re:It made the NYTimes and Kudos to Transmeta (Score:5, Informative)
Jeroen
Parent
Hmmm, SCO related? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting timing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting timing. (Score:5, Funny)
Trond Myklebust:
o Fix rpc dentry list usage
o Copy comments from System V file system routines to make it more "unix like."
Parent
Changes (Score:5, Funny)
Daniel Ritz:
o [PCMCIA] fix yenta unload oops
David S. Miller:
o [TCP]: Use proper time_*() comparisons on jiffies
Re:Changes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
About OSDL... (Score:5, Informative)
OSDL is dedicated to enabling Linux and Linux-based applications for data center and carrier-class deployment. We provide the crucial hardware for testing and development at this level, giving open source developers around the world the resources needed to bring Linux further into telecommunications and the enterprise. We are an independently governed, non-profit organization supported by 21 industry leaders.
Sounds cool
Linus: so thoughtful, human, and down to earth. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the greatest things about open-source: the people. People who are willing to donate so much time and effort to the benefit of everyone on earth as opposed to people who want to screw over the world so they can make themselves rich.
We're much better off than those cheering on phony, cut-throat business men who run and jump around a stage like monkies to the tune of Gloria Estefan.
Re:Linus: so thoughtful, human, and down to earth. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a troll, but I'll bite. You're just like a friend of mine who does IT knows nothing but Microsoft Windows as a platform. He just has this bullish tactic of telling everyone "Linux is never going mainstream, deal with it. The money is in Windows." It's not about making money, it's about making things better.
Open source development is very fast. Apache, Mozilla, KDE, GNOME, Linux, and many others are moving at a break neck pace. They produce software and fixes for software much faster than Microsoft. As for being on the desktop, well, it will. It's only a matter of time.
Lots of people said Linux and open source in general would never make it "mainstream" and look, the popularity is growing all the time. Heck, my mother and sister (as well as myself of course) run Linux. What's funny is the platform runs some Windows applications faster and more reliably than Windows does (thanks to Codeweavers and the Wine project). On top of that, we've even got retail stores selling Linux to desktop consumers preinstalled, ala Walmart's Lindows PCs.
So, you're wrong, mark my words and just wait and see. I will not "deal with it".
Parent
Re:Linus: so thoughtful, human, and down to earth. (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS and Perens care deeply about the freedom of users and developers, and want to ensure that that freedom is there today, tomorrow, and as far into the future as possible. I don't see them as egomaniacs, just guys who have a cause.
Linus, btw, is fully behind the GPL (as the original author of Linux, he could start releasing it under any license he damn well pleased). He released it under the GPL from the start, and that was a large part of his debate with that prick who insisted on using Minix. Linus has just stayed more focused on the Linux code, rather than branching out into advocating the GPL for other software.
Parent
Re:Linus: so thoughtful, human, and down to earth. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I hate to respond to ad homonem trolls like this, letting this silly statement go by unanswered, particularly in light of the clueless moderators marking it up as insightful, and allowing this sort of misinformation to stand unrebutted, would be an even greater disservice than feeding the troll.
First, RMS and Bruce Perens are hardly the "rule" in open source and free software projects. Quite the contrary, they are exceptional in many respects, as are most public figures in the world for better or worse. Linus is actually more akin to the average coder of free software: he does it for fun, for the joy of coding, and is relatively apolitical about the whole thing.
ego maniacs desperate to keep their role at the head of their little cliques
Second, as for the alleged egos of Bruce Perens and RMS, despite their occasional public disagreements and arguments their egos are no more, nor less, developed than those of most male humans above the age of puberty. Indeed, as anyone without an axe to grind who has seen RMS speak will point out, he is actually quite soft-spoken and humble, and his opinions, while strong, controversial, and often unyielding, are born of idealism and not of self aggrandizement.
Even the whole GNU/Linux thing has nothing to do with RMS personally (notice that he isn't asking people to call it RMS/Linux), but stems from a desire to get his message about software freedom out to the public at large, and the feeling that the 95% or so of the operating system we call Linux (which includes all of the filesystem tools, etc.) was getting zero recognition and thus, the message behind the writing of those tools (in RMSes opinion) was being lost. Idealistic yes. Stubborn, yes. Egomaniacal? Hardly.
We need the RMSes and Bruce Perenses around. RMS has steered the community clear of numerous dangerous shoals with respect to licensing conflicts (the old KDE/qt license prior to TrollTech's graceful fixing of the problem, the incompatabilities of the old Mozilla license, etc. all of which have since been fixed, denying the likes of SCO and Microsoft ammunition to damage the projects and community at this stage of the game), and Bruce Perens is responsible in no small part for getting closed minded people to look at free software, first embracing its technical advantages and then, later, after seeing the empowerment of the freedom it offers, to embrace free software's freedom: the freedom to innovate as one's business requires, the freedom from having a vendor yank one's chain, the freedom to participate in a free and competative marketplace, rather than to work beneath the thumb of a convicted monopolist, the freedom to modify a tool to better match one's purpose, and so forth.
But Perens and RMS are hardly indicative of your average free software coder. Linus, while himself far above average in accomplishments, bears a far greater resemblence in temperament and attitude to most free software enthusiasts and developers, certainly far more so than either RMS or Perens.
Parent
Additional related stuff. (Score:5, Informative)
OSDL money (Score:5, Funny)
The organization was created with an investment of $20 million from I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Computer Associates, NEC and Fujitsu.
What no SCO?
The rats are abandoning the sinking ship! (Score:5, Funny)
I guess that this means we can all get back to conducting serious business based on SCO Unix - the bread and butter of many a development company.
(In 20 years time we'll probably see Torvalds daughter marrying the Swedish king!)
Changing jobs... (Score:5, Funny)
Just last week I started a new job after a long and tedious four and a half year tenure at my former job. In this new job I'll finally get to work on things other than fighting fires. I'm very excited. Just thought everyone would like to know.
When your job changes are... (Score:5, Funny)
That is all.
Press release from Transmeta (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the press release [transmeta.com] alluded to in Linus' email. Still no mention of his leave being limited to one year.
Linux Creator Linus Torvalds Joins OSDL
First OSDL Fellow Will Devote Himself Exclusively to Linux Development
BEAVERTON, OR, and SANTA CLARA, CA, June 17, 2003 â" OSDL, a non-profit, global consortium of leading technology companies dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux, and Transmeta Corporation (Nasdaq: TMTA), the leader in efficient computing, today announced that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, will join OSDL as the first OSDL Fellow.
As an OSDL fellow, Linus will work exclusively on leading the development of Linux, the open source software that he created in 1991 as a university student in Finland. Torvalds will dedicate himself now full-time to guiding a distributed team of thousands of Linux developers around the world. At OSDL, he will have hands-on access to its state-of-the-art computing resources and test facility. He will also help set priorities and direction for the Lab's different industry initiatives.
"It feels a bit strange to finally officially work on what I've been doing for the last twelve years, but with the upcoming 2.6.x release it makes sense to be able to concentrate fully on Linux," Torvalds said. "OSDL is the perfect setting for vendor-independent and neutral Linux development."
Founded in 2000, OSDL has data centers in Portland, Oregon and Yokohama, Japan used by Linux developers around the world. With investment backing from Computer Associates, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel, NEC and others, the lab sponsors key industry projects, including industry initiatives to enhance Linux for use in corporate data centers (Data Center Linux) and in telecommunications networks (Carrier Grade Linux). OSDL is increasingly being recognized as the center-of-gravity for the Linux industry: an important and independent central body that invests in the growth and innovation of Linux for the benefit of customers.
"OSDL is a leading Linux-industry advocate with the single-minded focus of accelerating its use throughout the enterprise," said Stuart Cohen, OSDL CEO. "Linus' decision to join us is a confirmation of the importance of our mission. OSDL is the only organization where Linux developers, customers and vendors can all participate as equals. The addition of Linus' perspective and guidance to the Lab will enhance our value to all three of these groups."
Linux is the fastest-growing operating system in the world. Revenue for Linux-based servers grew 62% in 2002, while overall sales of servers dropped 8%, according to Gartner Dataquest, a market research company. By 2007, Gartner predicts that Linux may grab 15% of the worldwide market.
"Linus Torvalds adds tremendous credibility to OSDL's efforts to drive the evolution of Linux forward into enterprise computing and carrier environments," said George Weiss, vice president and research director for the research firm Gartner. "The computing market is still questioning how far and how fast Linux can go as an enterprise-ready platform. With Linus at OSDL, many will be looking for leadership from the lab for answers to those questions."
Torvalds will join OSDL on leave from Transmeta Corporation, where he is currently a Transmeta Fellow. Transmeta is an OSDL member and worked with OSDL on the transition. "Linus has made substantial technological contributions as a member of our development team here at Transmeta," said Matthew R. Perry, president and CEO, Transmeta Corporation. "Transmeta appreciates and fully supports Linus' strong interest in devoting his attention and energy to certain emerging industry-wide Open Source initiatives at OSDL."
About OSDL
Founded in 2000, OSDL is dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise. Supported by a global consortium of IT industry leaders, OSDL provides state-of the-art computi
Re:Early post! (Score:5, Funny)
You actually *paid* for the privelidge of being the idiot who FPs an article?
You really need to get out more (says the person who's been visiting every five minutes to see this story come out of the future).
Parent
Re:Linux will not succeed on the desktop until... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Who knows? XFree86 draws my windows just fine. 3d is plenty fast using Nvidia drivers. 90% of desktops users won't care what's going on "under the hood".
2) See 1. Prolly does need a clean up, but I'd say the same about Windows registry. LFS gives good reasons for locations, and there's also good reasons to retain Unix-ness.
3) Bollocks. Development is astronomically fast.
4) Usability is being addressed by both KDE and Gnome. Again, how much maintaining does the average user actually do? As far as software management goes, if RedCarpet or Up2Date is too hard, I honestly don't know how much easier it would need to be.
Parent
Re:Linux will not succeed on the desktop until... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Scrap KDE and Gnome, put *all* the code into XFree itself, that way everyone is stuck with whatever "paradigms" you think up
2) Stick every single configuration file into one GIANT configuration file, which would be so big and monsterous that it would require a binary format, along with a special program to edit it and a bunch of API calls to modify it
3) Make 7-10 different versions of the OS, all built on essentially the same thing, but each requiring their own set of patches and updates
4) Launch a huge marketing campaign to brainwash people into thinking your product delivers a great "experience"
Well then you'd just have Windows.
Parent
Re:List poisoning clearification. (Score:5, Informative)
An entry on a linked list is to be freed.
Upon it being removed from the list, it's pointers (prev/next) are 'poisoned'
by being set to hopefully really, really invalid addresses.
This is to catch any bad code that continues to use the now invalidated pointers.
The bad addresses should cause an opps instead of allowing the code to possibly trash other valid data structures.
Clarifications welcome.
Parent