The thing with Linux is that the developers themselves are actually customers too: that has always been an important part of Linux.

No-one has ever called me a cool dude. I'm somewhere between geek and normal.

I don't actually follow other operating systems much. I don't compete - I just worry about making Linux better than itself, not others.

The big thing about distributed source control is that it makes one of the main issues with SCM's go away - the politics around "who can make changes." BitKeeper showed that you can avoid that by just giving everybody their own source repository.

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.

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

People enjoy the interaction on the Internet, and the feeling of belonging to a group that does something interesting: that's how some software projects are born.