Thirty years ago, Linus Torvalds was a 21 year old student at the University of Helsinki when he first released the Linux Kernel. His announcement started, “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional…)”. Three decades later, the top 500 supercomputers are all running Linux, as are over 70% of all smartphones. Linux is clearly both big and professional.

For three decades, Linus Torvalds has led Linux Kernel development, inspiring countless other developers and open source projects. In 2005, Linus also created Git to help manage the kernel development process, and it has since become the most popular version control system, trusted by countless open source and proprietary projects. //

Regarding creating Git and then handing it off to Junio Hamano to improve and maintain, Linus noted, "I don't want to claim that programming is an art, because it really is mostly just about 'good engineering'. I'm a big believer in Thomas Edison's 'one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration' mantra: it's almost all about the little details and the everyday grunt-work. But there is that occasional 'inspiration' part, that 'good taste' thing that is about more than just solving some problem - solving it cleanly and nicely and yes, even beautifully. And Junio had that 'good taste'." //

I very much don't regret the choice of license, because I really do think the GPLv2 is a huge part of why Linux has been successful.

Money really isn't that great of a motivator. It doesn't pull people together. Having a common project, and really feeling that you really can be a full partner in that project, that motivates people, I think. //

I write very little code these days, and haven't for a long time. And when I do write code, the most common situation is that there's some discussion about some particular problem, and I make changes and send them out as a patch mainly as an explanation of a suggested solution. //

Because all my real work is spent on reading and writing emails. It's mostly about communication, not coding. In fact, I consider this kind of communication with journalists and tech bloggers etc to literally be part of my workday - it may get lower priority than actual technical discussions, but I do spend a fair amount of time on things like this too.