Linus Torvalds as one of the top 10 geeks of all time

I haven’t read this news until today. It’s on itnews.com.au, published last November 10, “The top 10 greatest geeks of all time”. He’s really amazing because of the work he did in trying to scratch his own itch, he was able to influence others in working with him on developing the Linux kernel and continuously improve it.

A quote from the article:

Perhaps even more important, Linux provided the spark which ignited the developing open-source software movement, which has now redefined the idea of distribution and arguably helped form the basis of collaborative principles on the web which would later become social networking and hosted collaboration tools.

I can’t help but be amazed that he was still a student when he started working on the Linux kernel. And what’s even more amazing is that what started out as his personal project became useful to a lot of us, even if we don’t know it. Servers are using Linux, as well as desktop machines in universities, homes and offices. I hope I could see something similar happen in my country too. It might just sound like some obscure country in the world but I know that there are brilliant minds who have something to contribute for the greater good, in terms of empowering us with good tools, that is.