I think Linus's pragmatism has a lot to do with Linux's success. He's out to make Linux the best it can be, and he's not worried about what MS is doing or what

I think Linus's pragmatism has a lot to do with Linux's success. He's out to make Linux the best it can be, and he's not worried about what MS is doing or what BSD thinks or whatever. He doesn't have the political agenda of the FSF or the commercial agenda of say Apple or Sun. Hardware companies can open, or not open, their hardware - developers can build open, or closed, source programs on Linux. His approach to licenses is the same - he uses what works for him, and lets others decide for themselves what works for them. It makes Linux attractive as a platform at all levels because you never feel like you're making some grand statement, or locking into someone's master plan. I have Linux servers in the office, but also Windows desktops. I program code for embedded devices (running Linux). We use the right tool for the job, and if a better tool comes along we can switch. We're not married to the computers, we just use them. To some extent this makes the whole "Linux on the desktop" issue a non-issue. Maybe it'll be on the desktop one day. Maybe it won't be. Either way it doesn't seem like this matters much to Linus - as he said Linux competes with itself. I like pragmatism. It gets stuff done.