A lot of people want to have market share numbers, lots of users, because that's how they view their self worth. For me, one of the most important things for Linux is having a big community that is actively testing new kernels; it's the only way to support the absolute insane amount of different hardware we deal with.

I think that freely available software can not only keep up with the evolution of commercial software, but often exceed what you can do commercially.

In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it - but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it. Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in the knowledge.

I don't try to be a threat to MicroSoft, mainly because I don't really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows-the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.

The bulk of all patents are crap. Spending time reading them is stupid. It's up to the patent owner to do so, and to enforce them.

Linux has more than satisfied any small initial expectations I had. It's simply incredible how successful Linux has been, and how good a time I've had developing it and leading the project. It does take a lot of my time, but it's time I really enjoy spending, and Linux has continued to be challenging both technically and from a managing standpoint.

Before the commercial ventures, Linux tended to be rather hard to set up, because most of the developers were motivated mainly by their own interests.