Re: [OFF TOPIC] Linus Torvalds, the man of the century
Marcus Brinkmann wrote (in a message that I lost):
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 11 Apr 1998 12:05:59 +0200."
>
> Total Percent
> richard rogers 636494 7.42
> henry ford 555916 6.48
> douglas macarthur 474770 5.53
> bill gates 468605 5.46 <--- We can beat this poor rating!
> howard hughes 351237 4.09
> vehbi koc 350473 4.08
> steve jobs 336439 3.92
> murat arslan 205791 2.40
>
and asked to vote for Linux Thorvalds.
Orn Einar Hansen <oehansen@nettaxi.com> responded:
> Voting for Linus Tolrvalds is not a good idea. The man is not a
> Titan, in any sense of the word... even less than Bill Gates.
I agree. Moreover, I think the "man of the century" list is a silly
one, with its emphasis on captains of industry. I think that for
instance scientists like Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein or Watson
Crick, who founded the knowledge on which our technology is based,
should rather deserve a place on this list. Without quantum mechanics
there would be no micro-electronics, and thus no microsoft and no
Linux. One could even reason that people like Hitler or Stalin,
horrible as they are, could be nominated as man of the year, because
they caused the political structure and the power structure of the
world to be as it is now (post-cold-war).
Concerning Linus Torvalds I would like to make another remark: He
certainly is an outstanding person, having created the Linux kernel
and devoting his energy into the successfull consistent development of Linux
itself. On the other hand, one could reason that Linux is there
because the Free Software Foundation was there with GNU. The Linux
Kernel is only one (OK, vital) part of the complex system that
Linux is. I think that, if the Free Software Foundation did not exist
when Linus developed the Linux kernel, Linux itself would not have
come into existence. Therefore, if I had to vote for the most
important person concerning Linux, it would be possible that I would rather
vote for Richard Stallman.
Paul Huygen.
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