found drama

Should have known this would have been the first article Wired shared from the most recent issue.

On one level, Torvalds’ life really is filled with quotidian routine. He works from home as a fellow for the Open Source Development Lab, a corporate-funded consortium created to foster improvements to Linux. His commute is a walk down a flight of stairs to an office he shares with Tove, his wife of nine years. It’s jammed with Linux-related books, few of which he’s read, and looks out onto the narrow walkway between his home and the neighbor’s. The early July day he invites me to visit is his first official one as an OSDL employee, but it isn’t long after my arrival that he excuses himself to take out the garbage because Tove nags him about the smell. Later, he takes a break to feed a lunch of milk splashed over Cheerios to his three daughters, all younger than 8, while Tove runs errands.

Somehow it’s refreshing to read that. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s the practical use of “quotidian” … maybe it’s just that here’s this regular guy, very easily like any person I might happen to have met at school or work or elsewhere. The inventory of Linux, “dressed … [in] a white polo obtained for free at some Linux event.” But what really makes me smile: People have tried to make Torvalds into what he’s not – anti-money, anti-capitalist, anti-Microsoft – so they tend to miss his true strengths. Those who work closely with Torvalds describe him as a steadying force atop an ever burgeoning community populated by more than its share of prickly programmers and zealots. Under his guidance, they manage to crank out software that matches, if not exceeds, the work produced by the salaried armies of Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and other well-financed behemoths.

About Rob Friesel