Gatekeepers of open source innovation

TalkBack 4 of 4:

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

RE: Gatekeepers of open source innovation

I'm not sure your comparission of Steve Jobs and Linus Torvaulds to Disney and Bergman respectively was necessarily valid.

Disney produces movies. It decides which movies it'll fund and which ones it won't. It's more of a gatekeeper letting some ideas through and others not.

Bergman was a visionary director who took stories, had them made into the scripts he wanted, found producers, and then turned them into movies. He didn't create the stories, but he made sure they had a strong vision.

Apple innovates based on the views of its CEO. Steve always wants to make it easier for everyone to use, no matter what it is. He didn't invent the mp3 player, but the ipod is the success that it is because of how easy it is to use. That's his vision.

Linus wanted a UNIX-like O/S for his PC and ported the already existing MINIX code to the task. With a few tweaks and twirls to make it work, it became Linux. That really wasn't very innovative, even back then. Since then, he's overseen what gets added and what doesn't. But most of the innovation, including things like the Completely-Fair Scheduler, came from others, not from Linus. He decides if it's a good idea or if it isn't.

I'm not meaning to put Linus down. He's very good at what he does. But from what I've seen, Linus is more like Disney than Bergman and Steve is more like Bergman than Disney.

But your question is still valid. Where do we find people of vision?

Posted by: mheartwood   Posted on: 06/30/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS to Achieve Highly Available, Load-Balanced Clusters Dell The Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS operating system integrates Cluster ... Download Now
• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now