Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds [Full-length]

Let me welcome lenus up here and this guy is going to help you out with the with the with the thing and so um while while we're getting Len's uh microphone fixed uh by the way no slides uh and definitely everybody get your uh your phone switched off or or on silent and maybe I'm going to have to remember to do that in a minute myself um just to get an idea of the demographics here uh could how many of you guys are students Raise your hand like high so most of you how many uh

staff members faculty members at Alto okay great uh how many of you are developers in one way or the other excellent all right very good um and how many of you are either currently entrepreneurs want to be entrepreneurs or are looking at that is a is a possible career okay good we're getting there a nice uh one other nice thing that I Can't test uh like this but I noticed looking at the signups that almost exactly 50% of the audience is had does not have a Finnish last name so Finnish or Swedish so I assume

both of those so we have very multinational crowd here and uh I think I think it's going to make for a nice setup so the general idea here would be is I I'm going to kick things off with a couple questions uh and uh and and then I want to open it up very Quickly to you guys and um really encourage you to to to come up with something interesting to ask and uh I'm sure lus will find find something interesting to answer I'll preempt him with one thing by the way is uh I think

he'll tell you that he's not an entrepreneur correct he's an engineer and think it's a really interesting this whole the the whole history of lenux is uh is is really interesting as it relates not only to entrepreneurial uh Stuff but basically to getting things done and building something big with high ambition so let me let me start off um I did a I did a search on Google video of Lena tals and I got 1.45 million hits so I couldn't and I went went and watched looked a few of those to figure out what are

the questions that have been asked already and what uh uh might still be left to ask and I'm sure that I obviously don't hit all of it also Uncovered a great page with uh lenus Tal's quotes which is a a treasure Trove of interesting stuff uh really recommend you guys to take a look at it I'm leaving now so I I'll I'll pinpoint it no I'm not going to pinpoint those but but um um I guess I guess my idea or the idea here would be to to try to try to talk about some things

that are interesting from our kind of burgeoning uh developer hacker Community here that's also Starting to look more and more at not necessarily going to big companies that may for example uh not be having as many jobs anymore um uh I don't know I'm just just guessing um uh but also for for roles in in any kind of enterprise uh and government even so I think uh we really try to look at the idea of of of Entrepreneurship is more deep down as something that's kind of driven from within and it's a it's more of

a way of Thinking um but I I wanted I wanted to ask a little bit about the the beginning of lenux I mean I know uh you've been asked about it many times before but but what what kind of fascinated me is that that um you know a multi hundred probably multi hundred billion dollar ecosystem was born basically in a bedroom in a probably cold dark evening in in in Hells maybe an overstatement but um but uh but could in in the in the in the question kind of is this um You've said often that

it's it's a bit accidental that it came became something so big um yet we're of course as a community trying to encourage big thinking and and ambition so so maybe um could you just tell us a little bit about about what was uh going on and what was kind of going through your head uh as you were kind of taking the first steps so as will already mentioned I really don't see myself as an entrepreneur um And I come from a background where I even when I started Linux I was 21 years old and I

had basically programming half my life at that point so I was in the situ ation where programming was a hobby but it was almost a habit that I had made some bad mistakes uh at times and bought some odd computers that were not very well supported and as a result of that I had gotten very used to the fact that you can't even buy readymade programs you have to write them yourself Because uh I started off with a Vic 20 which was actually fairly common but it was common at the time time when it was

not common to really buy stuff for it so I started programming then I switched to a computer that was very much unsuccessful the Sinkler ql that had a very small community and again that meant that there was never even a question of running programs that other people wrote if you didn't write your own programs You didn't do anything with that computer pretty much so I had been constantly just doing programming all my life and I was looking for a new project and they all ended up being things I used myself plus the occasional game that

was so bad that I would never use it so but usually it was things like I wrote my own assembler I wrote my own editor I wrote my own tool for doing this and that and uh I came to hsing University found out About Unix and decided I want to have Unix at home and how hard can it be I mean you you really but you really come from that like history of saying hey I always write my own tools and I mean I actually tried to find commercial tools again and this time it was

on a regular pc so you actually would expect that by now 91 you can actually finally in my life I wouldn't have to write my own tool because I could buy it but it turns out I couldn't because it was EXP ensive as hell and uh it was geared towards literally Banks I mean the if you looked at Unix on PCS back in the '90s the main users were were banking applications and things like that and for some reason when you sell into that market you don't you add three digits at the end of the

or of the number just because Banks is where the money is obviously right so it was not GE to towards my kind of use where I wanted it for my own personal Use um so it wasn't planned it was very much accidental and it literally was a question of hey I've done my tools all my life I'll do this too interesting what what was the uh can you identify the first point where you you thought that there might be some level of commercial opportunity I can identify by the first point where I said what they're

selling that yes uh it would actually happened Very early on uh like I remember I think it was bite magazine in like January '92 or something like that I mean this was really rough this was Linux 0.12 and uh there was an ad for selling uh what was the first I was it SLS that was the first one or something where they basically sold the service of you could buy seven flopp high density floppy discs I think and it was I forget how much it was and the only reason I Actually know about this was

uh I didn't get that bite myself but Andrew tanin Bal who we've had a few small discussions before he he actually sent me the notice about this and asked me was this really what you wanted to happen and I was like yes and I don't know because uh by then I had realized it wasn't really about the the price but that what I wanted to happen was easy availability of Unix because that was what I had looked for And couldn't find so in a sense it was like I it was clear that Andre tanan expected

me to say no I wanted I wanted to be free on the internet and these people who are selling it are evil but I was actually hey it's convenient to buy it if you have the 35 bucks or whatever it was it was not a huge amount of money but it wasn't like five bucks either uh you can buy it on the floppy and not wait for seven days for it to download over a 300 Bod modem or whatever so interesting um how about um early on you know you said you'd obviously been programming for

some time had some victories some some some failures I mean can you identify the few kind of things you would have done differently very early or you know and then the converse mistakes that were made as as as you started let's say building it and extending It really the very early days I have a hard time even imagining what I did that I could have done wrong uh it really none of my programming career was really planned it was a passion for me I started programming when I was so young that that I read all

these books about Assembly Language Without Really noticing I did not so kind of a background I did not understand that Assembly Language was supposed to be the Symbolic form of of of a machine code so I always called what I wrote Assembly Language even though what I actually wrote was the literal numbers I wrote the machine code because I I did not have an assembler so to me Assembly Language was the data statements that had the numbers in them that's how I started doing Assembly Language and uh anybody who actually knew what they were doing

would have Called that machine code and would have bought an assembler because they realized that's just stupid but I didn't know what I was doing so I literally for several years including my first few months with the Motorola 68k I would do the assembly by hand and actually write machine code so and that was just because I didn't know what I was doing so how how about is the is it you know then fast forward to the kind of Lenux community starting to build um in terms of management of the community community I mean I

think this is a I guess lenux is known to be the biggest collaborative effort of mankind I read some I think wired called it or something like that but obviously the management how did how did you get it going so I actually think building the pyramids took a lot more planning than Linux because one of the things that I think is really interesting is how there Was Zero management there was no Logistics there was no planning going on at any point and what happened was through open source people did what they were good at doing

so for example I still don't maintain a website I have never in my life done any web programming because I'm not interested I think that kind of stuff is you have Mis people to do that for you right I'm interested in programming uh and and [Applause] and but there are people out there who who they set up a website and do all the DNS magic and they can do it in their sleep because I mean that's what they do and they don't even think of it as their job it's just that something that they do

on the side and uh and the F that's what happened when when I put Linux out for FTP at the F for the first time I never figured out how to set up an FTP site right there was somebody who did it For me so there was uh the when business started happening um I didn't get into this for the business side I wanted to do again programming so when other people started selling Linux I Linux I was like yes now I can avoid caring about that side too uh I got out of for the

very early versions I had to do my own programs in user space just because I mean I was the only person there so for the first couple of months I would release not just my kernel sources but I Would also release two dis images and two dis images because the first dis image was the binary version of the kernel just so you could write it to the boot floppy and the other dis image contained your root file system there was no init there was no init is too fancy we only need a root shell and

that's it that's how real men do things right and and then somebody else came along and said hey this is stupid you need to have you knit and I was like I Do and and and they just did it and I stopped doing my dis imag because again that was not what I was interested so the the real power of Open Source as far as I'm concerned well one of them is that different people are good at different things and different people have different interests and what open source really allows is that you don't even

have to you don't have to do the planning ahead of the logistics of setting up a company and I realized this Is about entrepreneurship and you should set up a company and you should know that you need need an Mis person and you need an executive assistant and you need this and that and and you need to know how to balance the books and as far as I'm concerned the big advantage of Open Source is people do what they're good at and they automatically gravitate towards that if you're good at doing a website you like

doing that kind of things you just do it and and that was very Interesting how there was no planning involved because we didn't need to plan it was all very organic and that's actually how the development has worked too that we have I mean we've had some situations we've had the source control management issues we've had that happen a few times where we had really painful problems with maintaining the source code and and having to to completely change how we did things and then we really had to do that in a planned Manner I mean

that those did not happen randomly but those are actually very few most of what happened in in Linux development was very natural the the hierarchy we we use for doing development the fact that I work with 10 maintainers roughly at 10 or 20 maintainers who all have their own sub areas and they have their sub maintainers that they work with and they trust and and they have their portion of their sub areas and we have this network It wasn't like we designed that either it's just happened because that's how people work uh so a lot

of uh a lot of Linux development has been very very much an organic process based on I guess trusting a two-way trust between the parties yes but on the other hand we a lot of this is stuff that I analyze later saying hey that's how it works and I'm wondering why does it work that way but the fact is that is how people work that the whole two-way trust Between a small number of people people you trust your friends you trust the people you work with for over time and you don't trust a 100 people

I would never trust this audience I mean you're you look like a Shifty couple of guys and girls right you trust your close relatives you trust 5 10 15 people even people who know a lot of people even when you have like a huge network of people you rely on you maybe you're on LinkedIn and you have maxed Out and you have 5,000 people in your network how many of those do you trust 10 right and that's kind of a basic issue that that the way people work is is I think inherent in our brain

I mean the the 10 might be five for some people who are not that socially adapt and it might be 50 for some that are but but at the same time the whole development process actually I think is is again it works really well and I think one of the reasons it works really Well is because it grew up we didn't try to enforce a certain hierarchy on it we used the hierarchy that just worked on its own and that turns out to be the right hierarchy okay yeah maybe my my last question and then

um I'll turn it open to the audience um obviously a number of companies have been commercializing uh Linux and and so my question would be are you kind of satisfied with that end of the the way it's been commercialized It it's um okay it's better than okay I mean it's it was something that we were nervous about in the beginning I mean no question that when people started and when I say we I mean we I mean by then it wasn't just me it was these other Engineers that had slowly started getting involved that whenever

it was I mean long before IBM said we'll put a billion dollars we had the small companies and and people were worried that what would happen when commercial Interests come in and what happened was commercial interests suddenly want to sell Linux so they want to do all the boring crap they do they do Q&A they do I mean raise your hand if you want to do Q&A right yeah not a oh there was a hand up there but I think that was a joke right right and yeah and uh or doing the whole user interfaces

and trying to make it user friendly that was not a high priority for the technical guys especially early on so the the Commercial interest actually forced Linux to become much more well balanced than that I mean I'm sure we've had our clashes but at the same time without the commercial guys Linux would never have gotten where it was which is kind of sad looking at so many of the open source projects especially at the time I think that has changed but especially at the time a lot of the open source projects were very much anti-commercial

and there was a very Strong uh we need to keep this free and pure and companies are evil inherently and trying to sell it leads to bad problems uh and uh I think and hope that mentality is largely gone now but it certainly there early on great all right so um I want to open up for some questions here so uh first one spotted here so you hul and we have a couple Crystal uh hi K uh lenos do you follow any uh development of any new programming languages do you see any any Uh language

except C which is suitable for development of operating system so I have to say I'm kind of old-fashioned and I'm really interested the reason I got into Linux in or operating systems in the first place was I really love Hardware I love tinkering with Hardware I not in the sense that I'm a hardware person I giving me a soldering iron is a bad idea but I I like interacting with Hardware from a software Perspective and uh I have yet to see a language that comes even close to C in that respect it's not just that

c you can use C to generate good code for Hardware it's that if you think like a computer writing C actually makes sense I mean and and I think the reason it works that way is the people who designed C designed it at at a time when you I mean when compilers had to be simple and the language had to be kind of geared Towards what the output was so when I read C I know what the the Assembly Language will look like and that's something I care about the I don't do a lot of

programming myself anymore I'm a technical lead person I merge other people's code but if you go and look in the Linux git history and look at what I do the last few months the kind of code I've changed I made sure our uh file and past lookup takes as few cach misses as Possible and uh all that code is C but in order to really be able to it's optimized at the level where I worry about single instructions kind of thing and especially single cache misses and I love doing that because that's it's completely I

mean to some degree people say you should not micro optimize but if what you love is micro optimization that's what you should do and we made sure our algorithm are are are good before we started the micro optimization So uh I'm very proud of the fact that we look up path names way faster than anybody else I guarantee it right and we can do it in parallel on a thousand CPU machine with no contention I mean that is something that has happen in the last 18 months and that is impressive I mean you don't know

how impressive it is until until you work with that code for I mean I thought we'd never get there but we're there Now so so that's the kind of thing that really excites me from a technical standpoint but next one back here Linux I was about to ask my question already this morning but didn't have a chance uh the Linux operating system is a standard def facto for the service platforms that's for sure and even nowadays it's being used for some mobile devices and for many of network switches and so on but it's never been

uh never reach really an age of being a Competitor at a desktop level right why uh this is my personal failure point in Linux that I started Linux as a desktop operating system and it's the only area where Linux hasn't completely taken over that just annoys the hell out of me it's like you said it has had some success in the mobile operating system Google's last numbers were 900,000 new activations every day that's not some success right right uh so the desktop is Really hard and I know why it's hard and it's still annoying that

the desktop is basically the last hold out the reason the desktop is so hard to crack is most consumers do not want to install an operating system on their machine and that's not desktop Centric you don't want to install an operating system on your cell phone either right the reason Linux is successful on cell phones is not because you have 900,000 people downloading dis images and installing Them on their cell phone every day no it's because it comes on the cell phone pre-installed and that has never happened in the desktop market and it's really hard

to get it to happen I mean you you get it there have been compan companies that sell like Dell even in Finland although I know they do it in you in the US but I think they do it in Finland too that especially if you're a big business and you want to run Linux they will pre-install Linux on your Desktop but it's something where you have to specify that you want it and they do it for a very limited portion of their of the machines they sell so it's not something very common and if you

don't get the pre-installs you're never going to get the desktop dominance and uh will that ever happen right now the biggest hope is projects like Google Chromebook and I have a first generation Chromebook and the thing is slow and Horrible and when I get back home uh I think I should have a second generation Chromebook in the mail just because for some odd reason Google sends me these things so so I will see I'm I know the hardware is so much better so I'm no no longer worry about the the slow part uh but this

is something where I don't think you hit it on the I know you don't hit it on the first generation I don't think you HD it on The second on the third generation maybe on the fourth fifth that's when we start talking if you look at Android it wasn't Android 1.0 that took off so so I'm I'm hopeful that on the desktop it will happen but the only way it happens is if we have pre-installs and it's it's not there today okay over here and then up at the top next so you said that you

see yourself as a technical person and as the Linux started growing you must have had to Deal with a lot of business related things and you never did I never had to deal with a single business related thing in Linux ever seriously I've had to deal with a lot of other things but business related things I got queries and I just said I I don't care we had we had legal issues we had the trademark issue was a huge waste of everybody's time and hugely pointless we've had tons of these stupid things going on but

I don't think I've ever had a single business decision or business issue I had to get involved in I and one more thing that when when you were developing uh Linux you were a developer and you started it as a project but as the system grew your perspective about the operating system yeah also changed so how how do you think like how how long did it take for you to grow up as as as who you are now and like what's what's the difference between that Linus and this liness I'm The wrong person to ask

and the reason is I I mean it's happened gradually and I don't notice the difference right you could probably ask somebody who has known me but not seen me day to day and say okay compared to the geeky kid who didn't really like to look people in the eye uh when he was 20 years old what is and what's the big difference between him and the guy that sat next to the president last Night that was funny so so it was uh I don't know I mean one of the things that still makes Linux interesting

for me is a that technical challenges keep on changing so we still do relevant technical work I mean there's no question about that but part of it is my my work has also changed I don't do programming anymore I have had to make things like git and try to make process changes so that we work scale better as a community uh and these days I do most Of what I do is communication I mean I what I do is I read email I pull people's changes or I tell people that no this is too ugly

to live please go away and never approach me ever again so so that's kind of what I do and and that has changed over time and that has kept the the whole thing interesting for me and I think for I mean there's there's literally people involved in Linux development who I remember coming in in maybe even late 91 and certainly early '92 so there are other peoples who have been involved over 20 years not many but okay back there and then to the front row here H hello my name is Miguel I run an open

source uh can you speak a little louder uh I'm Miguel I run an open source company based in Portugal and I'm wondering uh about the state of patent Wars around companies if you are going to do uh Linux again the kernel again What license would you choose now I the one choice I'm really still very very happy about is the license choice now admittedly the GPL version 2 is not the original license original license was something I wrote and was like three lines of code and it says you may not charge money for it if

you make changes you have to send them back to me maybe it was only two lines I can't remember C1 and two yeah so um but I'm completely convinced the GPL vers version two is the right license and that doesn't mean that it's the perfect license it's it's still legal e and it's still there's gray areas in the license and it could have been it could have been better but I really very deeply agree with the things laid out in the GPL version too even though I then very deeply disagree with most of the stuff

that comes out of Richard stallman's mouth so the two are not in any Way I mean you don't have to agree with Richard stalman to still like GPL version too right uh so I would not change that I mean I would not change the license that's for sure there might be other things I do differently but I can't think of them either go is it on um do you think Linux is in good hands so that if you decide today not to touch the computer anymore it would go on and on so show hands how

many are of you are Involved in an open source project that is not the caral okay a fair number how many of you have a core team that is more than 10 people there's one maybe another tentative hand the normal size for most open- Source projects are three people roughly I mean there may be people here I mean there were a couple hands that had more than 10 people people maybe there would be some more that had more than Five in the konel we have 50 really I mean 50 people who are very very core

every single release every 3 months we have a thousand people involved that send us patches there's the colonel development community and I do not know why is the deepest development community in the open source area by far I mean by two orders of magnitude often and uh if I disappear tomorrow there would be I mean there we'd all have to raise the Flag to half MK and it would be really sad but nobody would even notice in the chronal community and not quite true but there's a lot of people who I mean the master but

the decision making is between the thousand and like uh it's not that I make decisions but quite frankly most of the real work is done by many people uh the there's many layers of decisions even before most code ever reaches me and there are at least three or four of the core Developers that can take over my work and do take over my work when I go on vacations occasionally right when I go away for a week I don't even bother I was just let people know that hey please we're not in the merge window

just don't bother me too much because I'll I'll be away but if I go away for two weeks I tell people like Greg and David and Andrew and a couple of other people that hey I'm gone for two weeks you're in charge so I have at least four people Who are like they they can do what I do in fact Greg largely does do what I do and if you know who Greg is you know who Greg is if you don't you don't care so I'm not good okay there's one in the middle oh hi

uh although you said you're like really technical person you're interested in programming and you're not interested in some of the stuffs like user interface and other stuffs but you know whatever you say kind of influences Quite a lot on all those fields for instance you said you didn't really like Gom 3 interface and people are all going like wow lindus says you know Gom 3 is crap and something like that so how do you feel about your influence in those kind of fields that you're not interested in so sometimes I'm a bit upset that people

take what I say a bit too seriously and and then then 5 minutes later I said screw that I don't care right I like that people take me Seriously but at the same time I refuse refuse to then let that mean that I don't say what I mean I mean I've always wanted to be very honest in my my statements uh I use strong language on the internet to the point where some people feel offended and that's their problem I uh I actually think that especially in a community like uh open source other developers need

to know how I feel about things I'm Not I'm impolite because I'm impolite I mean I'm not making excuses for that but I also actually believe that when when you work with a lot of people it's better to be really open about your feelings so that you don't have people who buy mistake misread you uh I've had that happen I I have literally had developers who were working on things that I didn't really like but I didn't shut down early enough they worked on it for a long time they Felt that it was ready they

submitted it to me uh and I said no this is horrible because at that point I had to make a decision and uh in at least one of those cases I had some other their friends basically email me later and saying the guy is suicidal right I mean and that's not my fault but at the same time I I I if I'm open early on and saying hey this is going down a direction that I don't like I think that's actually healthier for everybody involved instead of me stringing people around along and trying to be

polite so partly is my personality I am blunt and I am from Finland and I tell people what I feel like but partly it's actually a conscious choice to say no I'm not going to tone it down just because somebody might be hurt thank you interesting okay over here yeah so many Things happened um Linux was accidental git was accidental what G actually I'm proud of git I want to say this yes but it was accidental it was the fact that I had to write git was accidental but Linux the design came from a great

mind and that great mind was not mine I mean you have to give credit for the design of Linux to kingham Richie and and Thompson I mean There's there's a reason I like Unix and why I wanted to redo it I do want to say that git is a design that is mine and unique and I'm proud of the fact that I can damn well also do good design from scratch okay now you can so what's so what's the latest accidental thing that you work [Music] what's the I may have to come back to that

because I Can't I mean we've had a lot of stuff that was accidental I mean the fact that uh for example that we do fairly well in cell phones and that multicore in cell phones is actually important now and we're really good at it was an accidental result of the fact that we happened to do supercomputers 10 years ago uh so there's those kinds of accidents that happen that are accidents because different people work on different kind of projects and it turns Out that 5 years after the fact there were actually things that connected them

that nobody ever saw coming right and that's that's been a huge success of Linux and I think that's interesting from a technical standpoint how important it has been for Linux to actually have one single kernel for every single device out there I don't think people and I didn't actually think it would be possible but if you look at every single other operating system out There ever nobody has ever done that before look at Apple they have separate operating systems for the for their low-end devices and their high-end devices look at uh Microsoft same thing they're

claiming that they're trying to merge them in Windows 8 they're lying they're not they're full of [ __ ] the only but Linux is no but and it turns out we did it because I actually care about beauty and it turns out it was nicer to do it the Way Linux did it and it's a unique thing in Linux and it's a big strength because it turns out there's often these kinds of accidental uh technical connections that people didn't believe in at the time but then things changed and and now cell phones have the same

issues that superc computers have here hi I'm interested in the time that you spent at the University back in the early days and uh I know that you were At least briefly a member of a research group and I was wondering what kind of experience that was and I know that you did some teaching assistances which turned out to be surprisingly beneficial in meeting your wife and so on but I was all over the mat I loved being at the University I really liked the university uh for many reasons like I I assume most of

you are technical people from well now Alta University so you think the university people are like These theoretical nerds that are useless for any real work I love that the the uh abstract side of of the computer science uh at Helsinki University which is very different from I think the computer science here at tkk or alt uh I loved Spectrum uh the only time I really was over here was when we were in the pink coveralls and and ran around drinking beer uh I was a TA at University I did uh I did stin for

half a year or a year in the HRI theaters research group it was interesting and it means that yes it took me like nine years to get a a master's degree which you're were pretty fast then yeah well you're you're supposed to be faster I will say that one of the it wasn't quite nine years I think it was eight and a half one of the years was literally me just I could forcing myself to write the thesis I had everything read And I'm one of the there's a lot of people like that I know

I've heard other people have exactly the same issue that you have everything done and the only thing you have Les left is the writing of the your final thesis and uh one of the impetus for for actually moving to the US was I got a when I got a job offer I was saying okay this will finally force me to do my thesis because I I refuse to to leave that University have done so so I I actually didn't get My the papers from helsink University until after I already moved to the US but I

had finalized everything I enjoyed the University of life and I did a lot of different things and and uh for those of you who are young enough to still be studying hey enjoy the hell out of that time because it was some of my favorite time well can I can I ask continuation on that why why didn't you follow the academic side any further oh it's easy I uh you noticed I had trouble writing my Thesis I I loved being at the University but I hate writing papers I'm I'm not actually bad at it I'm

I'm a I think I am a reasonably good writer I have a hard time getting started I want to have when I write something I want to have like a point to my writing I want it to flow and if I don't see exactly how I get from the beginning to the end and uh and make it all make sense I can't get started or I have a very hard time getting started And quite frankly if you don't like writing papers you should not stay at the University and I mean I realized that and said

it had been my uh I I used to think that I would be a scientist and stay at University and uh I realized no I I just don't like fraking papers I don't really like teaching uh I have to go to the industry and I loved going to a startup so if any of you ever get the chance startups that are early in their Startup career when they're still doing the early technical stuff and they do not see where it's going and and everybody's really gungho are absolutely wonderful work experience I was that trans met

up for seven years and five of those years were wonderful and then when the IPO was getting closer it suddenly changed from not being so much about the technology and suddenly you had to worry about customers and you had to worry about money and and IPO issues and Suddenly it wasn't fun anymore I stayed on for a while and then I said no this is not what I signed up for just a quick uh last question uh did you get any supports uh for Linux from the University and would you have liked some I I

did and there's a finished saying and I don't remember the saying but there's a finish saying that you you should not stand up because you get cut down what's the saying I've never okay I'm sure there is Because I've heard it I've heard actual Finnish people ask me that wasn't it uncomfortable to to stand out didn't people try to put you down down and try to make you part of the same gray mass as everybody else and I had absolutely the reverse experience at HSI University uh it wasn't like they were there was not a

lot of special support but every all the people were very happy about me running my experimental stuff on the University Network and and they were really happy when we did the I mean as just an example a small detail when we did the 1.0 release in 94 or something the university wanted to give us the like big uh main auditorium at the computer science building and they I mean everybody was really nice and and they there was a lot of the computer science department got an alpab based machine because they realized I was supporting Linux

to the Alpha and they thought this is an interesting project there was actually a lot of support that it wasn't like official support but in within the uh computer science department I think people in general were really nice and the whole sure it was odd I mean they everybody inside the university realized how odd it was that something practical came out of the computer science but but at the same time it was it was like that's cool I didn't know we Could do that so it was it was fun I really liked Helsinki University I

mean I'm sure I would have like TF too but I had a great time at H University great okay I have a question over here uul oh no you haven't okay uh so a short backstory on the so to explain my question is like I got myself a two years ago a laptop that had uh uh two graphic cards it had an INT and then Nvidia and it had the famous Optimus chip that was difficult to operate from Linux and I saw at the beginning I was like expecting to get support at some point and

it was kind of difficult at the beginning and full support came something like a half year ago with one project that's on GitHub that's working pretty nice but what I saw that uh at some point I was kind of expecting that maybe Nvidia would uh kind of chip in and do something for it and they said flat out no we're not doing any support and I was like well we're playing in the Same sandbox why can't be nice to each other it's like like things like this that we cannot have uh the hardware producers think

about the the the other stuff as well they're they're like hard set on that you cannot really think uh cooperate with them on this is like what what's your uh comment on this that kind of situation I know exactly what you're talking about and I'm very happy to say that uh it's the exception rather than the Rule and I'm also happy to very publicly point out that Nvidia has been one of the worst trouble spot we've had with Hardware manufacturers and that is really sad because Nvidia tries to sell chips a lot of chips into

the Android market and Nvidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with so Nvidia [ __ ] you thank you some friends there don't get me wrong I'm not saying that other companies are perfect either We we we have had companies that just don't care we've had companies that felt that Linux wasn't a big enough market we've had uh we'd have situations like that at the same time there's a lot of companies that have been very helpful since very early days and it's I think it's very sad when you sell hardware and you

actually use Linux and you're being really difficult about it and and I really yes I'm I'm sad when it happens we can't do anything about it but it's Life I wish everybody was as nice as I am oh which okay so all right I I I want to bring up kind of like a open source movement of a little bit different kind and this this comes up because of the University uh connection here and that's kind of open course Weare there are lots of like developments like okay MIT uh open course Weare and then the

US uh Company corera by some famous people that offer kind of open classrooms for 100,000 people and so on so do you care Take care do you care to take a take guess how this Market will or this kind of Open Source work will go forward I have a really hard time really making any judgment but I do think it's really interesting how uh it's not just Linux but there's been other like the openness of the Linux development model has clearly kind of made some people stand up and think uh how can we use this

in our area and and um sometimes it's been in odd places But but I like for example the open course work is wonderful I love the discussion that a lot of scientists have about open Publications and uh and that kind of thinking I think is very healthy but I I can't answer your question I don't know how it's going to work out okay here H oh oh though you could y uh in the 80s and 90s uh most of the people who used computers they had some kind of clue that what is the code Like

what they using and also many of them were like making code themselves but nowadays like most of the people in Western world are using computers but they don't have any clue that what is in in the computer and what is the code so what do you think that would be said in chill for children in elementary school that could make them think that they also can make their own tool own tools great question so I'm of the opinion that one of the Great strengths we have as humans as a species is how good we are

at specializing and if you think about all the progress we've made we've largely made it because certain people specialize in certain things and can do it much more efficiently that way and I absolutely think that is true when it comes to things like being very technical and doing programming at a low level uh I do not believe in a world Where everybody every child should be taught to program I just don't think that makes sense that said what I do think makes tons of sense is to make sure that every child who has has the

capacity to really be passionate about programming and be one of those people who can specialize in this those people should be encouraged and they should have The possibility of noticing that hey this is really good and this is really cool so I love the projects like Raspberry Pi that make just cheap computers available because if you if you have successful Pro I'm not saying Raspberry Pi is going to be successful I I love the concept of it and and let's see how it actually works out but I think it's very important to have cheap throw

away literally throw away computers that allow people to Tinker And if that means that 99 of 100 raspberry piis will basically gather dust because nobody uses them that's fine if one of them made somebody realize hey this is cool and started program so that's kind of my opinion that I don't think we should try to make everybody program but we should try to make sure that everybody who has an aptitude for programming should have the ability to notice and and be noticed okay here okay yes Hana from Alta Center for entrepreneurship entrepreneurs they always taught

that they should have a vision for the business so are you saying that you didn't have any vision for the Linux in beginning and do you have it now coming from where is that question coming from I just feel very oh there you you were sitting down uh so I tend to call myself an anti Visionary because to me what is much More important than vision is execution and I've always quote Edison saying that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration so you do need to have the inspiration but in the end uh lots of

people have ideas it's actually finishing them and overcoming all the problems you will hit that is the sign of somebody who has a passion and really takes it all the way uh that said I I think you I mean I'm the kind Of person who believes in hard work and attention is detail and just doing a lot of work I think it's probably healthy to have a certain amount of vision too uh I don't think you in in some cases having Vision may be what gets you past the problem my argument has often been that

if you like look at the stars all the time time you will stumble over the pothole in the ground because you're not looking where you're Walking uh but so just because I'm a pedestrian looking at the details kind of person maybe those Visionary people do something good too I'm not I'm not going to argue too too bad I I believe more in having passion I think really caring about what you do is way more important than than having this mental vision of this golden future that you want to reach hi yes uh do you like

to see Linux Overtaking like Microsoft and Nintendo as a gaming platform and do you expect that to happen soon so I have to admit I don't game I mean I I'd love for gaming platforms to be more open because gaming platforms tend to be those the most closed pieces of Technology you can find almost and I think that's kind of sad because it means that they are designed to Basically exclude people from trying things out uh at the same time I understand exactly why the companies are doing this whole razor blade sell the razor for

cheap and and get the money through razor blades approach I understand why they do it so I'm not complaining too much uh it would be lovely to see more open- Source gaming and it is an area where people have I mean spent some time and I used to believe that open- Source Programs were all about technical things because that's what they used to be you used to have open source compilers and editors and operating systems and like geeky technical things and I used to think that's all we'll ever ever do because developers do technical things

I was wrong I mean there's tons of Open Source programs in other areas I don't think there's a lot of Open Source good games and part of that may be that games are a lot about content and you Really maybe need a different mindset about that but I don't know okay two two more questions one here how do you see the uh future of Open Source and open Innovation when you when we see a lot of startups coming up nowadays I mean uh how should startups approach the open so an open Innovation moment so I

I think if you're a startup what you should do about open sources take Advantage of it I mean that's really I mean you need that you you as a startup you need every Edge you can get and one of the edges you have is you're small and Nimble and you can take open source and you can try to really tune it for whatever special needs you're aiming for and I think startups especially and and new really Oddball technology that you're trying to drive that nobody has done before that's when you should take advantage of Open

Source and say hey we Can build upon this base that is boring and does all the things that everybody has already done and we'll add our special magic sauce on top and and really take advantage of the open source model and I think people do that but I think they should maybe do it more consciously sometimes okay okay last one yep hello everybody I'm yua good you don't know where I'm from but I Know where you are so I have a question for the audience how many of you were part of the big myo Migo

Adventure hands up oh wow so not all of us are born evil but I have to confess that now I joined the ranks of Nvidia we're now upstreaming take support anyway just to make you happy even though you gave me the finger I still thank [Applause] you okay very good I actually I like Being outrageous at times it's it's amusing to see I guarantee you if you make that video available on the internet there will be thousands of people who are really upset and I you know and offended I like offending people because I think

people who get offended should be offended it's like good all right okay great okay I I we need to cut it here so um wow fantastic stuff really Appreciate all of you guys coming here I want to give a couple couple thank yous um absolutely first to Technology Academy of Finland I know my harda for helping uh us get Lenas here to talk do this great [Applause] thing um second thing is I I I want to thank also the alto entrepreneurship society and the summer of startups gang for helping here I really everybody here who

has interest in building something Of your own uh you should look into the events of Alto entrepreneurship Society the things going on at the alto Venture garage so let's give those guys a big [Applause] hand and last we have a a a small uh prize award another not quite as big is the uh is is the Millennium prize but we actually have another uh fantastic organic movement that actually started from from uh Alto you I'll let present probably and since you don't really play Games with maybe for your they I really need three of these

okay we we'll get those yeah roio is a great partner to everything going on at Alto right now so thanks a lot and uh we as I told lenus before we're happy to ship these things to your place this is a b bigger than I expected good but uh and then of course last uh lenus thanks for spending your time here I know it's uh it's been a wild week but um hope hope this has been A good way to cap it off yeah no I enjoy doing the question and answer session so getting a

a bit more like feedback is always funny I hope you enjoyed it too good all right [Applause] [Music] thanks then