Linus Torvalds äusert sich zu den Vorwürfen von SCO

shadowrunner · 05.07.2003, 14:21

In einem Interview mit den San Jose Mercury News gibt Linux-Schöpfer Linus Torvalds Auskunft über seinen Abschied von Transmeta, über seine Einschätzung zu den Vorwürfen von SCO sowie zum Streit zwischen SCO und IBM, außerdem über sein Verhältnis zu Microsoft und Intel:

Mercury News: The SCO Group has sued IBM for illegally contributing Unix code to Linux. Do you believe this episode reveals any vulnerabilities in the open source movement?

Torvalds: Not really. Open source software is very visible. That means it's very easy to see if there is something wrong. I think that is a good thing. I think the whole point is that, with the kind of transparency you get with open source, people are a lot less likely to ever have intellectual property issues. I compare it to stealing a car. Do you steal a car in the bright daylight with a lot of people around? Or do you steal a car, go for a joyride at 4 am in the morning when there aren't a lot of people around. With open source, there is a lot of daylight. A lot of people looking at the code. You don't really go around and steal things

Er sorge sich auch nicht um IBM, so Torvalds weiter die könnten sich selbst verteidigen. Und auch wenn IBM zugeben müsste, etwas falsch gemacht zu haben, wäre das nicht sein Problem. Ein wenig Sorge habe er allerdings, dass irgend jemand aus der Linux-Community Code eingebracht haben könnte, der geschützt sei das würde ihn aufregen: "I care about software rights".

Sein Bild klebt wahrscheinlich auf 99% der Dartscheiben in Redmond: Liuns Torvalds, Schöpfer von GNU/Linux

Open Source ist, so Torvalds, die einzige Art gute Software zu schreiben:

Mercury News: Competitively, do you think this controlled chaos works against a company like Microsoft?

Torvalds: I think it ultimately the only way to do software. I have arguments why. The main one is the complexity issue. It's very hard for someone who doesn't work like this to keep control of an increasingly complex source base and increasingly complex user base. If you try to control the process too much, you can go straight to the end point where you want to go. That works well if you know where the end point is. If you don't know where it is and you can't control where people want to use your software, it's a very bad thing to have one branch that is very concentrated on one line of development. The best analogy is biological diversity. You have the Linux approach that is fairly diverse and all over the map. Maybe it is not very efficient. But it works very well in the face of complexity and changing circumstances. Changing circumstances will really show that part of that diversity really works. Biology on the other extreme is a very mono culture, which works very well as long as the circumstances stay the same. To some degree they are seen as very efficient and they can live on for a long time. A perfect case in genetics is sharks. They are very stable but they also don't evolve anymore. That works, but if you want to go past a certain point, it's a problem.

Das gesamte Interview könnt ihr hier nachlesen

Einen kurzen Überblick auf die Geschichte von Linux und Open Source findet ihr hier
Ein Interview von Linus Torvals mit der c't findet ihr hier
Wikipediaeintrag zu Linux

Shadowrunner