Really, Linus's greatest work is the organizing he's done. People can
argue about how great Linux or Git are. What really stands out is the
community focus on them. They've passed a technical threshold, where
their community benefits completely outweigh any competition's
technical benefits.
We should be careful about words here. Invention, innovation and creation are all different things.
Linux and git are both innovations, as they made known concepts (Unix kernel, DVCS) useable by the masses. They are hardly inventions, because they did not present new ideas or concepts. If they are creations ist debatable. Linus himself says Linux has "evolved", which means there is no specific creator, hence no creation. On the other hand git is (initially) completely created by Linus.
I found CatB extremely useful. I've heard a lot of hate for esr's work, and I'm curious about it. Perhaps it's just backlash, from his previous very high popularity.
So, could you elaborate with specific criticisms of CatB?
I think I can write more inspired criticism of cardboard, or styrofoam. Please, let me do those instead.
Or just go to his blog and read the second article:
"Regular readers of this blog are probably pretty clued in about my better-known software projects – gpsd, fetchmail, giflib, libpng, INTERCAL, ncurses, Battle for Wesnoth, Emacs VC and GUD modes, and the like."
The entire place is an altar to the man.
Even Stuxnet, the super interesting piece of industrial hacking. Even it didn't escape ESR's blessing wand:
"[My friend] incited me to blog by asking me the following question: “Would you call the perpetrators of the Stuxnet worm `hackers’, rather than crackers”?"
The entire security scene stood up in awe, given the combination of effort and ingenuity. But not ESR, he found this an opportunity to play pope and bestow titles.
The substance is lacking because I am not motivated enough to think harder about the man's writing. Something switched in my head and one day I realized he was the antithesis of the hacker-ethic he preaches. "Real Hackers", much like the real Scotsmen, work silently, are under-appreciated, and often unknown.
Having said that, it takes one to know one; given an audience the size of his, I am 100% certain I would go on a similar journey of self-worship and rampant "blow-hardery".
Ahhh! what wouldn't I do for unearned public recognition and a permanent podium.
