Baldy’s Paradox

Linus Torvalds — founder, creator, and general master of all things Linux — is not exactly known for being bashful or slow to share his thoughts. To quote the man himself: “I’m a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise.” This week, though, he’s gotten an extra share of attention.

The Linusmania — which quickly became a bubbling brouhaha — began with a message to the Linux kernel mailing list as part of an ongoing discussion of the way senior kernel developers like Torvalds handle security bug disclosure. Torvalds began by suggesting that “security people” are motivated by a desire for the glory associated with discovering vulnerabilities, and that this devalues the contributions of those committed to fixing “boring normal bugs.” He then went on to identify the “OpenBSD crowd” as typifying this position, and described them — rather curiously — as “a bunch of masturbating monkeys.”

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Dell today flipped the switched and is now officially offering consumer desktop and notebook PCs with Ubuntu 8.04 pre-installed. Two notebooks and one desktop join two desktop systems in Dell’s open-source product portfolio.

There is no denying that Linux recently has gained traction in the consumer space and Microsoft may have to look a little more seriously at competing with Linux distributions on different levels. Most recently, for example, Intel has basically thrown out Windows Vista as the dominant platform for its Atom Centrino MID platform, recommending and showcasing MIDs generally with Ubuntu as the operating system.

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