Ego? Sounds like a simple statement of fact. If someone else can debug the issue, can he say what he did and not get called out?

Also, it is funny that people who succeed in the first place due to what you call as ego, are expected to magically lose it and become "nice" once they are above a certain level of success.

[edit: +1. Downvote is not from me.]

So it's seriously a statement of fact that he's the only person in the entire community who could possibly debug that problem? I find that incredibly hard to believe.

If there were someone else, it sure sounds like he would be happy to have sloughed off the work. It doesn't sound glamourous. It sounds like it sucks. So everyone else would rather work on something they think is cool, and Linus is stuck with the crap work that in the end nobody is willing to do. That is why he's the guy in charge. That is why he deserves the credit for Linux.

Not "could" - "will". It's not the same thing.

"I have an ego the size of a small planet..."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

Pluto?

He said planet ... that probably means Mercury now.

No, he wouldn't want to be close to Sun :-)

I took small planet to mean dwarf planet.

He even calls it "rare"... So I didn't get the ego angle. He's probably understating it if anything.