Anfang Oktober hat silicon.com die einflußreichsten Köpfe der Computerindustrie in einer Liste zusammengestellt: der hauptberufliche Keynote-Redner und Hobbyflieger Steve Jobs belegt Platz Nummer Eins, danach kommt Bill Gates, reichster Mann der Erde und Wohltäter der Menschheit. Auf Platz Fünf: Linus Torvalds. Gary Rivlin besuchte ihn zu Hause. Die Homestory ist auch bei Wired nachzulesen.
Einige bemerkenswerte Ausschnitte über das Leben und das Selbstverständnis dieses fünftwichtigsten Mannes:
He works from home as a fellow for the Open Source Development Lab, a corporate-funded consortium created to foster improvements to Linux. His commute is a walk down a flight of stairs to an office he shares with Tove, his wife of nine years. It’s jammed with Linux-related books, few of which he’s read, and looks out onto the narrow walkway between his home and the neighbor’s. The early July day he invites me to visit is his first official one as an OSDL employee, but it isn’t long after my arrival that he excuses himself to take out the garbage because Tove nags him about the smell. Later, he takes a break to feed a lunch of milk splashed over Cheerios to his three daughters, all younger than 8, while Tove runs errands.
[….]
Torvalds, 33, looks like a supply clerk. His wispy brown hair frames preternaturally blue eyes and a soft, open face with an ample nose and heavy jaw. He’s almost never without a benign grin, a smile so pearly-white perfect that he could get work in a teeth-bleaching ad. And he’s dressed as though ready for a casual morning of tennis: white socks, white shorts, and a slight variation of the same shirt he more or less always wears – a white polo obtained for free at some Linux event.
[…]
This self-described ordinary Joe is admired by legions of fans who cast him as a modern-day warrior courageous enough to challenge the most powerful technology companies in the universe and smart enough to win.
[…]
Torvalds is a work-at-home dad with no formal management training. He confesses to being terribly disorganized. His approach to voicemail is to let messages stack up and then delete them without listening to any. His memory is so lousy that he can’t recall whether he was 6 or 8 or 10 when his parents divorced. And he’s awfully absentminded: We are heading out the door for lunch when Torvalds suddenly remembers that his wife is out and that if we leave, his kids will be home alone. Then there’s his ambivalence about his role as Linux’s leader.
[…]
Torvalds is a work-at-home dad with no formal management training. He confesses to being terribly disorganized. His approach to voicemail is to let messages stack up and then delete them without listening to any. His memory is so lousy that he can’t recall whether he was 6 or 8 or 10 when his parents divorced. And he’s awfully absentminded: We are heading out the door for lunch when Torvalds suddenly remembers that his wife is out and that if we leave, his kids will be home alone.
[…]
Nerd? Nerd!