On Linus and Linux
Names are not neutral. Neither are people or organizations. Names tell us something about the person or product or problem or company.
Concrete incremental problem solving matters. But so does vision, sales, marketing, creative lateral-moving art and problem solving, and many other areas of work accomplished by the great companies and builders and creators of our time that do not take a view like Linus.
“ I was never a “big thinker”. One of my philosophies in Linux has always been to not worry about the future too much, but make sure that we make the best of what we have now – together with keeping our options open for the future and not digging us into a hole.”
Many of Linus Torvalds statements are foolish, and he should be questioned and criticized by more people than just myself, Jeremy Welch.
Linus’s approach to thinking and building is a surefire way to get slop. Over and over and over again. The future is contained in the present, and future problems can be seen in both the easily visible problems of the present and the signs and visions of future problems given to us by God. There is no way to exist in the unique callings God has for us without digging a hole and limiting one’s options in some way. It’s no accident that many of our greatest companies started in the hole of solving other problems (some of them grand, some of them small). A rejection of thinking about the future means a rejection of whole classes of concrete problems.
Building for limited near-term problems will always get limited results. If one rejects grand vision, then one also has to reject grand problems. Paradoxically, rejecting grand visions actually IS a vision. It is just a thin communist vision that cannot orient people or community actions to the biggest longterm problems of our time, all of which will require unique approaches and unique people and unique companies and unique states to resolve.
My work Catastrophe of the Soul enables us to connect grand doom-class problems back to the narrow day-to-day actions that we all face. In my worldview I can accept the existence of someone like Linus, and see the limited value he and his philosophy can provide within the hole where he is digging. But I can also do something that Linus cannot, which is to value the existence of other great visionaries and creators and workers who do all the work that Linus is incapable of (given his limited worldview).
God made Unix and Linux, and God made Linus Torvalds. If Linus prays and seeks God honestly, perhaps God will call him out of the hole he is in and towards other projects and ways of thinking and being.