Just for Fun : The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary (30 page)

People get it now.

FAME AND FORTUNE

“What about the burden of fame?” That’s what some people will ask me. And let me tell you, the “burden” is not a burden at all. It’s fun being famous, and famous people who say otherwise are just trying to be nice and make nonfamous people feel like they’re better off. You’re supposed to be humble about your fame, and complain about how it destroys your life.

But face it, everybody dreams of fame and riches. I know I did. As a teenager I wished to become a famous scientist. Albert Einstein, but better. Who doesn’t? If not a scientist, then a racecar driver. Or a rock star. Or Mother Teresa. Or the President of the United States.

And actually, getting there was not at all painful. Sure, I may not be Albert Einstein but I feel comfortable about having actually made a difference, and about doing something meaningful. And getting recognized for it makes the whole thing all the better. So the next time you hear somebody complaining about fame and riches, ignore them. They’re just doing it because it’s what you’re supposed to do.

So is it all good? Of course not. There are certainly downsides to being well-known. I don’t have people recognize me in the streets (or at least not very often), but the huge amount of email I get is interspersed with the occasional message that is really hard to answer, and also hard to ignore. What do you say to somebody who asks you to give the eulogy for his dad that you never met? I never replied to that email, and I still feel a bit guilty about it. That was a very important thing for somebody, and to me it ended up being just an inconvenience.

Or how do you tell somebody who asks you to give a keynote speech at a conference that you really don’t have the time or the inclination? How do you make people realize that you long ago stopped listening to phone-mail messages, without appearing to be an inconsiderate bastard? Which you really are, after all. It’s not as if I end up caring all that deeply about every issue, just because I care deeply about the issue I’m known for: Linux.

Of course, eventually it becomes really easy to just say no. Or ignore the requests entirely; one of the reasons I love email is that it’s so convenient and easy to ignore—what’s one more email in the few hundred I get every day? The medium is so far removed from the person that it very seldom gets personal enough to make you feel guilty about ignoring it. It happens (see above), but it doesn’t happen very often. And even when you don’t ignore it, saying “no” over email is a lot easier to do than in person or over the phone.

The problem is fundamentally one of the expectations people end up having about well-known people. And the fact that it’s obviously not possible to live up to all the expectations—while feeling like you should at least try to do so. That’s partly what made writing this book a pretty nerve-wracking experience—trying to write a reasonably personal book, while at the same time not really disappointing people who expected something different.

And some of the expectations are downright silly. I often get the feeling that some people expect me to be a modern-day monk—living a frugal life in solitude. All because I thought that making Linux open and freely available on the Internet was a good idea, and because I didn’t take the traditional commercial approach to software. So then I get self-conscious and rather defensive about the fact that I actually enjoy spending money, and that I’ve finally upgraded my old Pontiac Grand Am to something more fun.
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Which brings up the second question after the “burden of fame” one. Namely, “Will success spoil Linus (and/or Linux)?” Will I turn into a self-centered spoiled brat who writes books about himself because he likes seeing his name in print, and because it pays off his new useless car?

The answer, of course, is yes.

After all, take a person whose life-long philosophy has been to have fun and do something interesting, then add some money and fame, and what do you expect will happen? Instant philanthropist? I don’t think so. Giving away money to charity really never even entered my mind until David actually asked the question during the making of this book. I looked at him blankly. “Shave the whales” was the first thing that came to my mind. Obviously I was not born to have great financial responsibility.

Does success change how you think about things? It does. Linux was a different animal when there were just fifty very technical users, as opposed to 25 million (or whatever the number is today) normal people who use it at least occasionally. And Linux was very different back when the only people working on it were people who did it entirely because it was fun and interesting—with none of the commercial interests that are so obviously there today.

And the same is true of Linus the person. Things change, and claiming that this isn’t so doesn’t change the facts. Linux is not the same movement it was five years ago, and Linus isn’t the same person he was back then. And part of what has made doing Linux so very interesting to me has been exactly the fact that it hasn’t been the same, and that new issues have continuously kept coming up. And they haven’t been just technological issues, but issues involving how the whole meaning of Linux changes in the face of success. Life would be boring otherwise.

So instead of using the word “spoiled,” I’d prefer to just say that commercial success has made both Linux and me “different.” I’d hesitate to say “grown up”—I think, for me, having three kids made far more of a difference that way—but simply different. Better, in many ways, but also less pure. Linux used to be
just
for technical people, and a safe haven for geeks. A bastion of purity, where technology mattered and little else.

These days that is not true anymore. Linux still has the strong technical background, but having millions of users makes everybody very aware of the fact that you have to be a lot more careful about what you do. Backward compatibility is suddenly a factor—and some day, twenty years from now, somebody will come along, say that enough is enough, and start his own operating system called “Fredix.”
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Without all the historical baggage. And that’s exactly as it should be.

But what makes me inordinately proud is that even when “Fredix” comes along, things won’t be the same anymore. If nothing else, what Linux has done is to make people aware of a new way of doing things, of how open source actually enables people to build on the work done by others. Open source has been around for a long time, but what Linux did was to move it into the general consciousness. So when Fredix comes along, it won’t have to start from scratch.

And thus, the world has become a slightly better place.

“
Why?”

“
Isn’t that when you vest your first chunk of stock options?”

In August he casually says, “Hey, when are you going to donate that hot tub?” He doesn’t have to consult an electronic device to remember the dates when Avuton will be visiting. He is plugged into the personal details of friends and co-workers in a way he didn’t seem to be a year earlier. In fact, he even knows what’s going on with
my
friends and co-workers. And for a fellow whose first words to me on the subject were, “Actually, I don’t remember much of my childhood,” he suddenly seems to have conjured up the memories: “Did I tell you how embarrassed I was when my mother wanted me to ask my grandfather to give me the extra
100
FM I needed to buy my first watch?”

I like to exercise and figured it should be a main component of our outings. I wanted to introduce him to surfing, but it made sense to start out with boogie-boarding. We drove over to Half Moon Bay one afternoon in early May, rented wet suits and boards, and Linus protested heavily at the thought of
wading into the chilly waters of the Pacific, even in a wet suit. But within minutes something amazing happened: He delighted in riding the waves. “This is great,” he enthused like a five-year old at one point, slapping me a high five. Of course, about fifteen minutes later he developed a nasty leg cramp—from being so out of shape, he reasoned
—
and had to stop. (When the cramp hit, he just sat there in the white water, apparently unable to get up, as waves washed over him. My first thought was: “Oh fuck. If I kill this guy, I’ll have millions of nerds on my case.”)

THE MEANING OF LIFE II

Have you ever lain back on a warm summer’s night, looking up at the stars, and really wondered why you are here? What is your place in things, and what are you supposed to do with your life?

Yeah, well, neither have I.

Yet I ended up having a theory about Life, The Universe, and Everything—or at least the subset called “Life.” You were introduced to this theory in the preface of this book. And since you’ve gotten this far, I might as well explain myself a little more.

My theory didn’t come about while staring up at the stars, immersed in wonder over the immenseness of it all on a clear night. It came about while I was preparing for a speech. When you become well known for one thing, people just assume you can be trusted to generate brilliant insight into unrelated bodies of knowledge that have been mystifying humankind for millions of years. And they want you to share those insights before a herd of perfect strangers.

No, it doesn’t make much sense. I got into Linux because I was a technology geek, not because I was any good at public appearances, let alone philosophizing without prudent limits. But few things in life make all that much sense, so I’m not complaining.

Back to the subject at hand.

This time I was invited to a local event in Berkeley called “Webrush.” Normally I wouldn’t even consider it, but the invitation came through the Finnish Consulate here in the United States and being a patriotic person (or at least feeling slightly guilty about hating snow and having moved abroad), I had stupidly said “Okay. Jag gör de
t.
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”

Now, nobody expected me to talk about the meaning of life, least of all myself. But this event was about life in the networked society, and I was there as the Internet person and representative of Finland. Finland, due to Nokia (the largest, best, and most beautiful company in the world as any Finn will tell you), is into communications in a big way, and “the networked society” is where it is at. We’ve already discussed how there are more cell phones than people in Finland, and the current research into finding ways of implanting the things surgically at birth.

So there I sit, wondering what I should talk about regarding communications. Oh, I forgot to mention that most of the rest of the panel would be comprised of philosophers talking about technology. This is Berkeley, after all. The two things they take very seriously in Berkeley are Berkeley politics and Berkeley philosophers.

So what the heck. If they were going to have philosophers talking about technology, why not have a technologist like me talking about philosophy? Nobody should accuse me of not having balls. They might call me terminally stupid (and hey, they probably do)—but
chicken?