Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust (BBC) [LWN.net]

The BBC interviews Linus Torvalds. "So I think that in order to make it in a consumer market, you really do need to be pre-installed. And as Android has shown, Linux really can be very much a consumer product. So it's not that the consumer market itself would necessarily be a fundamentally hard nut to crack, but the 'you need to come preinstalled' thing is a big thing. And on the laptop and desktop market, we just haven't ever had any company making that kind of play. And don't get me wrong - it's not an easy play to make."

The BBC also reports that Linus has co-won the Millennium Technology Prize.

(Log in to post comments)

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust (BBC)

Posted Jun 13, 2012 19:25 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Since it's the BBC, wouldn't that mean it'd be in SilverLight only even if it were available?

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust (BBC)

Posted Jun 13, 2012 20:12 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

No, the BBC moved to Flash long ago. Not enough machines can run Silverlight for it to be useful.

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust (BBC)

Posted Jun 13, 2012 20:18 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I wish Netflix would see that fact.

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust (BBC)

Posted Jun 17, 2012 9:49 UTC (Sun) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

I'm sure they want to. It is just hard making deals with the movie industry without something like that.

They clearly use as many open source and open standards as they can.

Some examples:

Netflix Open Connect used FreeBSD and nginx, they've also open sourced their hardware design.

Most of the interfaces they've build are HTML5 for example.

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust (BBC)

Posted Jun 13, 2012 20:14 UTC (Wed) by SilverWave (guest, #55000) [Link]

BBC is Flash,

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17784495

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust (BBC)

Posted Jun 13, 2012 22:09 UTC (Wed) by dashesy (subscriber, #74652) [Link]

Thanks, I wish the interview video was also available

Linus Torvalds: Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust (BBC)

Posted Jun 21, 2012 0:05 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

But BBC flash doesn't work with gnash/lightspark so you still can;t watch with free software. You can use get-iplayer for broadcast radio/TV, but not all their news video. Roll on HTML5 and we might actually get video that works in most places.