Portability is for people who cannot write new programs.

I don't have any authority over Linux other than this notion that I know what I'm doing.

An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program.

There's a few historical reasons for why git was considered complicated. One of them is that it was complicated. The people who started using git very early on in order to work on the kernel really had to learn a very rough set of scripts to make everything work. All the effort had been on making the core technology work and very little on making it easy or obvious.

That's what makes Linux so good: you put in something, and that effort multiplies. It's a positive feedback cycle.

I think of myself as an engineer, not as a visionary or 'big thinker.' I don't have any lofty goals.

I made very sure that I did not get involved with any of the commercial Linux companies, exactly so that I would be neutral and not ever seen as "working for the competition".