I love this guy's balanced approach to steering the kernel. Somebody asked whether a bunch of security-related patches would be getting into Linus' tree, and his response was great.

Basically, he spent a few minutes explaining how security people tend to think that problems are either security problems or not worth thinking about. They see things in black and white and only care about increasing security at any cost. He said performance fanatics can be the same in their approach to improving performance, and he tries not to treat security or performance patches as being too massively different from any other types of patches such as ones for correctness.

Also, a big fuck-you to this trend for shoehorning mindless Reddit memes into everything. Who the fuck wastes a question to Linus Torvalds on "Do you like cats?".

I am sickened by these interviews. I love this guy, but mostly he always faces the same stupid questions and therefore has to explain for the 1000th time

- why he could departure from Linux tomorrow and it would still work,

- why he doesn't use the GPLv3,

- how the stand is about hardware support and drivers,

- why he started Linux,

- was it intended,

- did he want to take over the world, ...

it's really always the same.

This guy has deserved more than having to sit in a room full of jerks that abuse him to get answers to questions that he has already answered numerous times and are all out there.

"... always faces the same stupid questions..."

As is the case with every touring author, artist, or creator with any amount of notoriety. It's much like taking a performance on tour-- same lines, same songs, same sarcastic remarks, same questions from fans ...

Part of the business of traveling and 'performing' for an audience, whether that performance is a presentation/talk, a reading selection from your latest book...

This is Linus Torvalds we're talking about - he's not exactly known for his diplomacy. I'm pretty sure if he felt the same way, he'd just stop doing them and never look back.

The question about whether he had any failures he wanted to talk about was pretty cool. He said he might like to be a bit of a nicer guy and be less of an angry jerk sometimes, but it's just not within him and he just is the way he is. That was a typical crappy soft question but the answer I thought was worthwhile to hear.

The fluffy box thrown around in the audience is a microphone called Catchbox, developed by students at Aalto University. http://thecatchbox.com/

We had some problems with the Catchbox during the beginning of the talk (the sound didn't get through to the live stream) but it worked surprisingly well after that. I could hear myself chuckle when holding the box as I listened to the video afterwards.

I love that Linus can talk directly and without marketing B.S.

I would have loved to ask him if he maybe wishes (or regrets) that he'd been more entrepreneurial and raked in billions on some project. Certainly he has the technical talent for it.

I recall reading that when he received the MacArthur prize, he was happy about the money award and said it would go toward his children's college tuition. I had been thinking that he made enough money that that would not have been a problem even worth thinking about for Linus; but apparently not -- he's rich, but not insanely rich.

Someone asked him what he did with the millenium prize money. He explained that it was actually quite a lot of money and apart from paying taxes on it he's pretty much sitting on it. His explanation was that he doesn't care much about money, and part of that is that he doesn't like worrying about it, and that prize was enough that he no longer has to worry about money.

I can't speak for Linus but I'm guessing the answer would be "no". I remember him saying at some other talk that he loved that he didn't have to worry about "business crap".

Besides a big reason for Linux success was that it was available for no cost. If he had just developed some other commercial Unix we would probably all be using BSD or Hurd right now.

I can't say he haven't done much for the community, I still don't agree with his philosophies though...