Time has a funny way of changing people's views. Anger and mistrust can often fade into mild scepticism, and once bitter rivals can sometimes develop a healthy understanding. This certainly seems to be true of Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, and his thoughts on Microsoft and Windows in general. And just recently, the famous coder apparently got to meet Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, for the very first time in person and not a single fisticuff was to be seen.
The meeting itself was a dinner hosted by Microsoft's chief technical officer, Mark Russinovich, and he showed off a snap of his guests on a LinkedIn post (via Sweclockers). "I had the thrill of a lifetime, hosting dinner for Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds and David Cutler," he wrote. "Linus had never met Bill, and Dave had never met Linus. No major kernel decisions were made, but maybe next dinner."
Culter worked at Microsoft for many years and worked on the development of Windows NT, Microsoft Azure, and even the operating system for the Xbox One. So one would certainly expect Gates and Culter to have met countless times over the decades, but I'm genuinely surprised that Torvalds and Gates have sat down face-to-face.
Sure, he has been very vocal about how Microsoft operated as a business in the past, and has never shied away from letting loose on Windows' closed nature. And Intel's chips. Oh, and Nvidia's handling of Linux. But in more recent times, he's been much happier to meet up with Microsoft.
That's almost certainly because the software behemoth's stance on open source operating systems has substantially changed since the days when Steve Ballmer was Microsoft's CEO. "A cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches," was his infamous thought on Linux. But over time, he changed his tune and current CEO, Satya Nadella, is very much pro-Linux.
Which is why I'm puzzled that Torvalds and Gates haven't met in person before, even if it wasn't only in recent times. Perhaps they have, and Russinovich has just misheard or misunderstood something. Either way, I'm sure it was a very pleasant dinner, though a small part of me is slightly disappointed that Torvalds didn't kick off one bit.
That got me thinking about tech rivalries in general. Compared to, say, 20 years ago, it's all a far more genteel affair between the likes of AMD and Intel, AMD and Nvidia, Apple and Google, and so on. Mind you, at least we had Epic Games vs Apple for a good while, though even that battle's run its course (for the most part).
I suppose when there are billions of dollars of revenue on the table, nobody is really going to go all Ballmer on a mere piece of software anymore. From a maturity point of view, that's certainly a good thing, but those old rivalries sure were entertaining to watch.
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