In the beginning, there was Linus Torvalds, a single developer who put together the original Linux kernel. Fast forward to 2008 and Torvalds is no longer the lone Linux developer.

Linux development is more like a social network built on trusted relationships and less like a democratic community of individuals dedicated to a single development process, according to Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

Linus Torvalds: «So for that end-point-developer situation "git rebase" is absolutely the right thing to do [...] So doing "git fetch + git rebase" is *wonderful* if all you keep track of is your own patches, and nobody else ever cares until they get merged into somebody elses tree [...] BUT if you're a subsystem maintainer, and other people are supposed to be able to pull from you, and you're su

It is easy to focus on the purely technical side of engineering: design, coding, documentation, licensing issues, and the release process. The interpersonal aspects of engineering also have a vital part to play.

Linus Torvalds, lead developer of the Linux kernel community, has merged DRBD, an open source data replication solution, into Linux as a fully supported component.

With the power of ten men, Linus reacted swiftly. Rather than cry about it like a little bitch, he created his own source control system called git. In a self-deprecating style that only a developer on Linus's level could pull off, Linus said, "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git.”

IBM's prospective (and as yet hypothetical) acquisition of Sun Microsystems could well give Meeks and other developers the chance to confirm their belief that a truly open developer-driven community centred around an independent foundation has the capacity to rejuvenate and enhance OpenOffice.org

Linus reflects on 18 years of working on Linux, the developer ecosystem and his goal for Linux on the desktop.

What will make a commercial open source project successful? Unfortunately, most people miss the two basic reasons why software succeeds or fails -- and doom years of development from the start.