Open Source and Linus Torvalds

This is a particularly illustrative Wired Magazine article about Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and the father of open-source computing.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/linus.html


Wikipedia weighs in on Linux:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

The big intellectual property corporations are shaking in their boots and trying to discredit Linux and Torvalds every chance they get. At stake is their very profitability and thus survival.

But at a consumer level, allowing the users of a system to change the system to meet their needs makes a lot of sense. Who better would know what they need?

Open Source has incarnations throughout history, but Henry Ford's Model T automobile is one of the first widely-hacked consumer products. Ford built it with an eye on the end user being able to fix it and even modify it slightly, and Open Source as a business model was effectively born.