Tux Watch

What a way to start off Tux Watch but yeah that’s what I want to know! I know this question is totally controversial but still it would be really informative and fun to list here what Geeks of the whole world think. So who do you think is the real Man, yeah the true Hero of the Geek World? I am going to share some neutral pointers here to get this discussion moving and comments rolling however this should not be considered as biasness towards a single Hero or any form of software however I will surely get bombarded for asking all this in the first place (wink).

Gates amazed the world with all that tons of Proprietary Software you have to purchase licenses for and if you don’t, you are entitled to Software Piracy. On the other hand, Linus Torvalds as a student built that wonderful marvel, the Linux Operating System that dominates the world of Servers including Web Servers now moving into the Desktop arena with different free distributions out there for you to freely download, use, modify and redistribute without any issues about paying high prices for licenses or attempts to totally violate Software Copyright Laws that should usually prevent you from sharing Proprietary Software with your neighbors.

Btw, just remember, companies will definitely charge you for online and offline technical customer support subscriptions, training or certifications, consulting and value added services such as certified software stacks. Hardware stands at the same price for both Proprietary Software or Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

Gates now has a big foundation to help humanity with the money his company made selling humanity such costly software in the first place and getting illegal users of his software thrown in to jail or their businesses sealed. Whereas, nice old Torvalds has shared freely and openly with the world his little fine feathered friend, Tux the Linux mascot and Linux itself giving the world a meaning of understanding and improving their lives through open technology sharing and knowledge development for benefit of humanity from day one?

One Hero came in with software for a price, whereas the other Hero came in with software for no price but yes you can charge a price for your hourly input or to earn your living…..so what’s the catch here? Simply another question, do you need to make money to give back to the world or you can still give back to the world through sharing your time, talent and energy to build a piece of software that can change the world forever? How? Very simple, what happens when you educate a mother? You increase the chances of her educating her whole family and similarly this idea is also very applicable to teaching her to earn or giving her something to establish a business with and she will feed her whole family. So which Hero helped educate the world and lead the whole global family towards generating an income to feed humanity or atleast who provided the means to do so?

Once again, who do you think did better, Gates, earning the money first and now giving it back while his company still makes those cool profits out of licenses, altough his company provided technology that fueled information technology revolution, but only helped people develop software for his company’s platform or Torvalds who has shared his software that could also have made his some good money if he had followed the Gates model but he didn’t as he gave to the world first and in the process earnt a reasonably good earning. Don’t all hard workers earn some good cash folks?

I know these are very weak pointers but still, you know what I am trying to get at. Will you prefer somebody to make money anyway he can buying all the luxuries in life and then give it out to the world to make it a better place; or, that humble young guy who first makes that fun filled effort to write software and share it with humanity for learning and doesn’t care whether other people will make money buying luxury with his software or not in fact he shares with other people luxuries through the fruits of his hardwork and together they grow a world of sharing, giving back to it while taking from it and helping eachother learn and develop knowledge.

So who’s the real MAN! YEAH!