Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates Meet for the First Time Ever

Comments

• mintiefresh@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨minute⁩ ago

  This is like seeing a picture of Gandalf and Saruman together lmao

  source
• gnuhaut@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Bill Gates is a monopoly capitalist with zero scruples. He screwed over so many people, vacuumed up so much wealth from all other sectors of the world economy. He has zero qualms about doing this either: There’s video of his depositions in the anti-trust case against Microsoft, and the whole fucking time he just argues semantics in response to the questions, and when pressed after five minutes of defining every fucking word in a sentence, almost always claims he doesn’t know or recall. Obviously a guy that thinks being as dishonest as it is possible to get away with is perfectly good business. And he does that despite whatever the outcome of the case, he’d be richer than billions of humans collectively. What pathology is this?

  There’s so much more shit, like the incessant lobbying for medical patents worldwide, or how, according to Melinda, Gates loved hanging out with Epstein.

  Now, why would anyone want to have their picture taken with that guy? Torvalds is such an unprincipled lib.

  source

  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The Conference at Redmond

    Well, they finally did it. Bill Gates, the Monopoly Warlord of Redmond, and Linus Torvalds, the caffeine-fueled architect of Linux rebellion, have shaken hands like two aging mob bosses who accidentally showed up to the same funeral. The image alone is enough to make a ThinkPad burst into flames. Gates, the man who once viewed free software the way a vampire views sunlight, now smiling alongside Torvalds, the supposed Patron Saint of Open Source, as if decades of digital trench warfare never happened. It’s like watching Che Guevara and Milton Friedman split a dessert sampler and talk cloud strategy.

    Mark Russinovich, playing the role of High Priest of Corporate Reconciliation, quipped “no major kernel decisions were made.” But let’s not kid ourselves, this wasn’t just dinner. This was a symbolic convergence, a ritual unification of cathedral and bazaar into a suburban steakhouse of existential despair. Somewhere in the void, the ghost of Richard Stallman is chain-smoking over a broken Emacs install, muttering, “I warned you bastards.” The only thing missing from that picture was a scroll of NDAs and a PowerPoint titled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance Capitalism.”

    What we witnessed was not diplomacy, it was absorption. The rebel king has been invited into the palace, offered wine, and handed a commemorative hoodie with the Microsoft logo stitched in ethically-sourced irony. Forget forks and pull requests; this is the final merge. Linux has breached the 4% desktop market share, and capitalism has responded the only way it knows how: by smiling, shaking hands, and quietly buying the table. Welcome to the Conference at Redmond. Weep for the dream. Or laugh maniacally, if you still know how.

    source

    • bobo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I may frame this. Poetry.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • Jankatarch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Where does Richard Stallman fit into this?

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What else would you expect from the “dictator for life”, that he would have the social skills NOT to attend “Conference at Redmond” ?

    source
• nucleative@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Both Torvalds and Gates are nerds… Gates decided to monetize it and Torvalds decided to give it away.

  But without Microsoft’s “PC on every desktop” vision for the ‘90s, we may not have seen such an increased demand for server infrastructure which is all running the Linux kernel now.

  Arguably Torvalds’ strategy had a greater impact than Gates because now many of us carry his kernel in our pocket. But I think both needed each other to get where we are today.

  source

  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    If it wasn’t them, it would have been other people. Computer science doesn’t rest on shoulder of a “Great Man”

    What Torvalds did was inspire a like-minded community to come together and work toward a collective good. On a shoe-string budget they constantly threaten Gate’s empire.

    Gate’s on the other hand chose to enclose the intellectual commons of computer science and sell them at a profit. He extracted a heavy toll on all sectors of human activity. And what did this heavy burden buy us ? Really NOT MUCH ! It squelched out collaboration and turned programming greedy, it delivered poor bloated software that barely worked and then stagnated for 20 years. It created a farm stall for us to live in, their innovation today is only explained as a series of indignities we will have to live with, because of platform dynamics we really, literally cannot escape the black hole that is windows for they have captured the commons and have made themselves unavoidable, like the Troll asking his toll.

    source

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Image

      source
  • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’ve said this before here, but techy people vastly overestimate both the ability and the patience of the typical user, and it’s the reason so few people use FOSS products.

    Products from big tech aimed at private individuals are designed to be as simple to use as possible, which is why they’re so popular.

    source

    • Ironfist79@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Is that why Outlook is so intuitive and easy to use?

      source
    • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nah, I have worked in IT education and in helpdesk. Average user doesn’t have a better time getting into Microsoft products, it’s not easier for them than FOSS. The reason for Windows domination is Microsoft spending money and lobbying power to put it in front of every user.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      What about the boat loads of marketing - ads - aimed at making you believe those proprietary programs are the best? Clearly you fell for it.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      And this in turn led to the younger generations being less tech-literate.

      source
  • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    But without Microsoft’s “PC on every desktop” vision for the '90s, we may not have seen such an increased demand for server infrastructure which is all running the Linux kernel now.

    Debatable, in my opinion. There were lots of other companies trying to build personal computers back in those times (IBM being the most prominent). If Microsoft had never existed (or gone about things in a different way), things would have been different, no doubt, but they would still be very important and popular devices. The business-use aspect alone had a great draw and from there, I suspect that adoption at homes, schools, etc. would still follow in a very strong way.

    source

    • nucleative@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I remember that IBM was famously missing the trend in the late 80s/90s and couldn’t understand why regular consumers would ever want to buy a PC. It’s why they gave the PC clone market away, never seriously approached their OS/2 thing, and never really marketed directly to anybody except businesses.

      Microsoft really pushed the idea that regular people needed a home PC which laid the foundation for so many people already having the hardware in place to jump on the internet as soon as it became accessible.

      For a brief moment it looked like a toss up between Microsoft IIS webservers serving up .asp files (or coldfusion .cf - RIP) vs Apache pushing CGI but in the end the Linux solution was more baked and flexible when it was time to launch and scale an internet startup in that era.

      Somebody else would have done what Microsoft did for sure, had they not been there, and I suppose we could be paying AT&T for Unix licenses these days too. But yeah, ultimately both Gates and Torvalds were right in terms of operating systems and well timed.

      source
• mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Genuinely kind of surprised they only met now, one would have thought that in over 30 years they would have run into each other at some point at some conference or other.

  source
• sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Top comment on that page is perfect:

  One wrote their own operating system incorporating others ideas on operating systems, the other’s mom bought theirs.

  source

  • whimsy@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Torvalds wrote the kernel, not the operating system. It’s a part of the GNU/Linux OS ;)

    source

    • Tja@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      … or as I have taken recently to call it, GNU plus Linux.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Mommy was one of the higher ups at IBM. Gates got most of it just handed to him. They are not the same.

    source

    • callouscomic@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      But but but… my parents stories about self-made, and cheapskate, and he’s rich cause apparently he’s not frivolous, and wears sweatpants, and other dumbass lies they ate up…

      source
  • fubarx@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I know it’s fun to bash on Gates, but it’s also bullshit. Dave Cutler worked on at least two major operating systems. He’s way up there in the Hall of Fame.

    source
• dil@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  In my head this means gamepass on linux

  source
• comador@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Bill announces a collaboration between the two, starting with an open source implementation of BOB and Clippy AI for Linux…

  source

  • MintyFresh@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Clippy!

    Image

    source

    • MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Image

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Now powered by Copilot!

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• nialv7@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Linus looks old now 😭

  I guess that’s how time works but still…

  source

  • toynbee@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I said in another thread about this, he looks like an older Tom Scott.

    source

    • Fortatech@gregtech.eu ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      About that, Tom Scott is also old now.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Down to the red shirt.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Aggravationstation@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Round 1, FIGHT!

  source

  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    Image

    source
• TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  No major kernel decisions were made,” jokes Russinovich in a post on LinkedIn.

  Man, wouldn’t that be wild, though?

  source

  • floo@retrolemmy.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Missing the opportunity for a legit decent LinkedIn post?

    I dunno. Tempting…

    source
• General_Effort@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  So, which one of them heard boss music?

  source

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What if they both did

    source
  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    There’s Dave Cutler in the article. They both heard boss music and it wasn’t theirs.

    See, Dave Cutler’s level of “boss” for Unix would be Kirk McCusick or Bill Joy.

    source
• brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I hate to sound preachy, but this is a good example of “rivals” peacefully meeting.

  So many people I meet IRL seem conditioned to think this person they hate on the internet would be someone they’d shout at like they’re an axe murderer, in the middle of a murder. It’s the example they see. Death threats are, like, normal on Facebook or TV News or whatever they’re into, apparently.

  source
• Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t Gates retired? And I have no idea if Torvalds is still active.

  But historical photo aside, isn’t this meeting a bunch of nothing?

  source

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Torvalds is still very active on the Linux kernel. As far as I know, he’s in charge of it and decides what code gets allowed in.

    source

    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Gates is still very active in his charity organization

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • PacMan@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Linus still approves the changes in the kernel. His main baby for the past 15 years or so has been GIT.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      That means there are highschool seniors who weren’t even alive while Bill Gates was at Microsoft.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • chrash0@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    without checking, Gates’ wealth is probably tied up in a lot of MS stock, and he could probably walk into the office and ask the intern to get him a coffee. but yeah i think mostly retired.

    Linus is still active is maintaining the Linux kernel.

    and yes, this is fluff, not some kind of summit

    source

    • _edge@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Gates could probably walk into most offices and get a free coffee and an impromptu meeting with the CEO if he wants to.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • Cyclist@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Still cool though. Also I think Bill has more money.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• maxfield@pf.z.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  it could be the year

  source

  • Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    Every year is the year

    source
  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    …that Linus and Bill kiss? Will they or won’t they?

    source

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Gay (kernel) panic

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Could they have met in a better place than in front of a Jotnar’s pubes

  source

  • const_void@lemmy.ml ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    lol what is with the pube art

    source
• Tronn4@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Now kithhh

  source
• fubarx@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I know it’s fun to bash on Gates, but it’s also bullshit. Dave Cutler worked on at least two major operating systems. He’s way up there in the Hall of Fame.

  source