Linus Torvalds Quotes
I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples' ideas and making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn't do.
Moore, J.T.S., director. Revolution OS. Wonderview Productions, 2001.
This was published just after his death.
The lecture was a tribute to the Russian Physicist & Dissident, Andrei Sakharov
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
By “arts” Jefferson meant the mechanical arts—inventions and engineering. Jefferson Extrapolated the science and technology progress at the time to the future in a way that few others did at that time.
This quotation illustrates a way in which science is frequently at odds with politics. Our politicians realize the importance of scientific research to our standard of living, economy, and quality of life. So they want to support research and development programs. However, budgeting and planning for these in terms of expected or desired results is virtually impossible. So scientific research, especially basic research is not susceptible to the usual planning and monitoring that is so common and effective in construction projects or other applications of science and technology. It is hard to predict when and which scientists will have the next critical idea. It is very difficult to hold scientists or administrators accountable for scientific research results because of this factor. See {624876}.
There has been a suspicion and distrust of scientist by the general population in almost all societies throughout human history. Dewey thought America was entering a new intellectual enlightenment and there was an improvement for a short time, but scientists then tended to come under two criticisms by the general public. One was the new “knowledge” they were claiming which not only contradicted much of general religious dogma, but change started coming so fast that people were told to reject that which only a few years earlier they were told to accept and vica versa. At the same time, some groups in society began to be distrustful of scientists because they did not appear to be controllable by the means and methods of the rest of the society and were viewed as “loose cannons” who might not fit into democratic society in the manner that the leaders of society wanted. Both suspicions have existed since then.
Although a conservative Republican, he and most other CEOs of modern companies do not denigrate and ignore science the way many other conservatives have done over the years.
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish-American software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the main developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android and Chrome OS. He also created the distributed revision control system Git and the scuba dive logging and planning software Subsurface.
