Linus Torvalds needs no introduction in operating systems or open-source circles. He’s the creator, muse and chief developer of the Linux operating system. Torvalds started Linux while he was in college in 1991. Today, Linux is the foundation of multibillion-dollar companies including Oracle, Novell and Red Hat. It’s used on computers from small office servers and home office desktops to the New York Stock Exchange.
Torvalds does this by managing a self-selected team of over a thousand developers around the world, united only by a mailing list (the Linux Kernel Mailing List) and a source-code management system (Git). Torvalds herds Linux programming cats from multiple major companies, such as IBM, Intel and SGI, as well as the occasional stereotypical developer programming in a basement.
How does he do it?
Find people you can trust.
My personal guiding principle is that I try very hard to find people I can trust, and then try to get out of their way as much as possible. I don’t mean totally unconditional trust; but on the other hand, once somebody maintains something, he really should be able to make all the normal daily decisions.
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