Linus Torvalds's BOF (birds of a feather) session on Linux at USENIX in
San Diego this year was unlike any other speech I have seen him give. For one thing, he spoke to a partially hostile crowd; ordinarily, he speaks before crowds that adore him. Also, this wasn't a keynote address on opening day, but a BOF session at 8:15 p.m. on the next-to-last day of the conference. One constant, however, was Torvalds's ability to calmly address touchy "red button" issues, which he did time and again.

FreeBSD dominated the FREENIX track at USENIX. Ill will between fans of the two free Unix siblings (Linux and FreeBSD) was evident in the room. I sat in the second row of the audience and watched the room slowly fill up. Two BSD supporters sat down in front of me, less than 20 feet from the small platform where Torvalds would be speaking. The first thing they did after getting settled was mime blowing darts at the platform. Actually, mime is not the right word --they also added the "phhhhhhhhhft. . . thud!" sound effects.

Torvalds started to ease such animosity before his talk even began. Just before Torvalds's speech, a BSD supporter offered him, almost as a challenge, a pair of red BSDaemon horns, which were seen in abundance at the show. Much to the delight of many BSD users in the crowd, Torvalds smiled and put the horns on his head, where they remained for the entire session.

Torvalds's talk also differed from his standard fare. Usually, he gives an update on the status of the kernel, then opens the floor to questions from the audience. It is this give-and-take with the audience he seems to enjoy the most. This time he gave a brief kernel update, including a mention of how well Linux 2.4 was scaling upward in the SMP world, and then summoned several well-known Linux hackers to the stage to help handle the audience's questions. Stephen C. Tweedie, Ted Ts'o, and others came forward. Miguel de Icaza was called up as well, but must have been absent from the hall, for he never appeared onstage.

Tweedie acted as a foil for Torvalds. Torvalds is cheerful and perpetually optimistic; Tweedie is dark, somber, and cautious. When Torvalds spoke of the wonderful improvements in scalability gained by getting rid of the "big spin lock" in the SMP code, Tweedie fretted that there were still bugs to be found and fixed as a result.

Controversy reared its head again when a young man -- who spoke as though he represented the Free Software Foundation (FSF), although this is unconfirmed -- requested that Torvalds ask Lucent to use the GPL for Plan 9, an experimental

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