Linus' Other Gift to the World 177
Glyn Moody writes "Linus is widely recognised for initiating two major developments: Linux and Git (it's an interesting discussion which of the two in the long term will be regarded as more important). But there's a third, which people tend to overlook: he also pioneered the key ideas behind what later came to be called open innovation. As more and more companies open up to embrace customer-generated ideas, and the idea spreads to other areas like open government, perhaps it's time to add open innovation to the list of Linus' achievements."
Post-singularity enterprises (Score:4, Interesting)
I think in the long run people will have forgotten both Linux and git, but the open enterprise system will go on.
In the future when we will have abundant robotic power, corporations will have to be managed differently. People with managing ability today are people who are good at manipulating people, with automated systems managers must be people who are good at manipulating machines, i.e. programmers.
The catch is that programmers aren't very good at manipulating people, and that include their peers. In a typical enterprise today a lot of effort is put into negotiating between the different departments and divisions. I cannot imagine a company managed by programmers doing that.
The Linux management system will work when managers no longer have people beneath them.
innovation. (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought innovation was what the Big Corporations did after the patent's ran out.
Take the case of the X-Y-Box (the first mouse) it was patented in the 60's. and low and behold on the 80's we got GUI's with mice. makes one think. Is this kind innovation setting us back 20 or 30 years.
I think we just have it labelled wrong here (Score:4, Interesting)
Linus' major achievement was popularizing and demonstrating open source and the projects it could accomplish, and Linux and Git were merely demonstrations of that. Glyn merely has caught up to us who have realized sometimes great inventors great invent things, but in software great inventors truly only invent great ideas. That is what Linus has done here. Stop thinking of Linux as a thing and start thinking of it as an idea, part of a greater idea which he has touted for a very very long time.
Linux vs Git? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can someone explain, or point to a discussion, of how it is argued that Git could be more important in the long term than Linux? Isn't Git small fish compared to Linux?
Re:Why credit Linus (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux wanted have his own UNIX-like computor. Buying a VAX to run Berkeley Software Distribution was at that time not afforable for a mere student and you also had to have an AT&T license for them.
The 386 BSD was released after Linux was started; Linux was started in '91 and BSD 386 came out '92.
Also you had the large lawsuit regarding BSD in '92 which slowed the development for BSD versions for 2 years.
Since then BSD systems more or less has been playing catch up with the more capable Linux system.
Had the BSD for 386 been released earlier and has not the big lawsuit stopped the distribution of BSD for 2 years
that Linux would probably not been much more then a hobby project that become abandoned when something
better came along. But instead Linux become the #1 UNIX-like operating system of choice.
SHARE (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering it's IBM's 100th birthday, it should be pointed out that a lot of the concepts TFA talks about were being done by groups like SHARE [wikipedia.org] long before Linus was even born.
people always have to turn it into Linus vs. RMS (Score:3, Interesting)