Torvalds: The Guardian Speaks

Wed Jan 31 02:16:21 EST 2001

Torvalds: The Guardian Speaks
By CRN
Jan 29, 2001 (5:23 PM)
<http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010129S0016>

Linus Torvalds, the inventor, lead developer, and so-called guardian of the
Linux kernel, sheds light on the release of Linux 2.4, the operating
system's future, and his role as guru-in-charge of Linux. Linux 2.4 is now
out the door. There are thousands -- if not millions -- of open-source
developers contributing to the Linux kernel, but ultimately, you alone must
sign off on it, correct? 

Yes. In the end, it's not that horribly hard. The worst part is just the
herding of developers and trying to cajole them into doing the right thing
-- or at least make sure they don't get too upset with me when I say no to
something.

Another horrible thing is having the press trying to second-guess me on
when the release will happen. 

As a man with a full-time job at Transmeta, is it becoming too much for
you, in terms of energy and what you can devote to development of the Linux
kernel? 

I'm lucky, or maybe I have just made the right decisions in life. Transmeta
has been very supportive. When I said I needed to concentrate on getting
[Linux version] 2.4.x out, the people here basically asked me what
Transmeta could do to make it easier. And it does help that I've been doing
this for 10 years. Making a release is fairly stressful, but at the same
time, it's something I've done before. And I have a fairly good feel for
it, which makes it much less stressful. 

But the Linux 2.4 kernel was more than a year late. Wasn't it scheduled to
be released by year-end 1999? 

The original plan was to try to aim for a nine-month productization cycle,
and part of the reason for that was that I expected the changes for 2.4.x
to be much smaller than they ended up being. My original main goal was to
clean up the SMP scalability to four CPUs, and it kind of grew into a major
file-system redesign. That said, everybody knew the nine-month goal was
unrealistic. But it was kind of "if we don't have anything to shoot for, we
certainly won't hit it." I was hoping we could get it down to a year or so. 

The gap between [Linux version] 2.0 and 2.2 was well over two years and had
been quite painful. 

The update to 2.4] ended up being almost two years, and while it never
became as painful as the 2.0 to 2.2 gap -- probably because 2.2 was
maintained more actively -- it's certainly still true that two years is a
bit too long. 

The good news is that for the 2.5.x series, we don't have anything like the
2.3.x wish list. Of course, that may change. I'm really happy with how
2.4.x ended up, though there's the obvious few months of watching
stability, etc. Maybe the 2.5.x series will be less intrusive, which would
translate into a simpler release next time around. Knock wood. 

If there was a Linux board, such as the Linux Lab, with 20 engineers
devoted full-time to finishing the code, finalizing it, and releasing it as
soon as possible, do you think the same delay would have occurred? 

Probably. Delays are kind of inevitable in this business. Of course,
because I never really had any hard deadline that I set for myself, my only
criterion was really "when I'm happy with it." I probably didn't get as
hung up about the release as an "official" body would have, and maybe a
Linux Board would have held people to stricter deadlines.

Who knows? At the same time, I think 2.4.x happened when it was ready, not
before, and not later. 

What didn't get very much press coverage was the fact that we really did
have a Linux Lab working on testing. In fact, there was more than one. All
the major vendors had a 2.4.0 stress-burn setup, and we found quite a few
bugs that way. I'm really happy with the level of support that I got from
Linux vendors in this area. 

Windows 2000 was years late. But that was Microsoft's woe, and its channel
was upset, too. In this case, your partners -- Red Hat and other Linux
distributors -- had their products ready to go in the fourth quarter of 2000.

Weren't they upset when Linux 2.4's release was delayed? 

So far, the vendor comments I've gotten have been pretty philosophical.
Many of them expected it to be even later, actually, and I never got a
complaint. Most of them seem to have covered the kernel development fairly
well, and I think they'd have been as unhappy as I would have been if I had
released 2.4.0 too early. 

How much pressure did you get from Linux companies, whose profits were
hanging in the balance until 2.4 shipped?

None at all, really. To some degree, I got "what do you think the timing
will be?" kinds of questions, but absolutely no pressure. Nobody said "we'd
really like it for the Christmas season" or anything like that. 

But how about the kind of pressure that IBM, Intel, and Oracle can exert
when they're hungry to ship product? Are you feeling more internal
pressure, given the vast constituencies in waiting? 

Forget about the Oracles of the world. Their product time lines are long,
and they want to test things on the shipping version. So they really don't
have any reason to even ask me. Only now that 2.4.0 is out will they even
start to think about it becoming an issue. Intel obviously has the IA-64
issue, but at the stage they are in, they were happy with even a
non-released 2.3.x test kernel. 

Having a real stable IA-64 2.4.x kernel out probably won't be an issue for
them until later this year. 

You alluded to a time in the future when you won't be the one in charge of
Linux. Who or what will be? Is there a new company, entity or organization
being prepped to take the reins from you as guardian of the kernel? 

What will be, will be. You ask the wrong questions. 

If a large, full-time team of engineers directed by a full-time leader
worked on the Linux kernel for the past year, might some of the features
planned for 3.0 made it into the 2.4 kernel? 

Ah, the old question about discipline as the best way to reach your goals.
Is an army known for its thoughtful approach? Would Mozart have been more
productive if he had scribes to help him, a secretary and a CEO to lead his
way? What if? We'll never know. 

However, we do know that the sometimes disorganized approach -- the strange
and motley band that defied traditional ways of writing software, the crowd
of individuals rather than the sternly disciplinarian army of ants -- has
so far done a lot better than anybody expected.

So far, we have a track record of having done a lot better than a lot of
"disciplined" companies with full-time leaders. 

Do you envision a day when you won't be the one signing off on the final
Linux kernel code? 

Some day, sure. Not in the near future, though. I don't plan that far ahead. 

Might you hand over the reins to the Linux Lab in the next two years and
serve as an adviser rather than lead developer? Might you sell the Linus
Torvalds trademark to a company, entity or other person? Might you license
it? 

Ah, you have discerned my plan! I will have to kill you before you
disseminate it to the rest of the world. 