Linus Torvalds—the accidental revolutionary.
11/12/2001
The No. 1 threat to mighty Microsoft is not the Department of Justice, Sun Microsystems, or IBM. Instead, it's Linus Torvalds, a skinny kid from Helsinki who championed the Linux operating system he developed as open source, allowing other developers free access to its innards to improve the software. Now Linux is the most used OS on Internet servers, and growing rapidly. Torvalds comes across as kind of a smarty-pants—but a likeable one—who doesn't care much for the established computer industry. This is a good read for understanding how Linux developed, and for providing a glimpse into the man behind the OS. He entertainingly lambastes Sun's "open source" strategy, confesses to enjoying being an IPO millionaire, and reconciles life as an open-source pitchman while also collecting a handsome salary from secretive chipmaker Transmeta.