When Linux Founder Linus Torvalds Leaves, Pandemonium Breaks Loose

Those who don't follow Linux and open source closely may have missed the recent brouhaha in the Linux world -- or only caught the highlights which for the most part missed the mark. Now that the dust has settled a bit, and with hindsight in our favor, we thought the time might be ripe for a little retrospective.

The news started on Sept. 16 when Linux founder Linus Torvalds, the originator of both Linux and the software version control system Git, announced he was temporarily stepping down from his role as benevolent dictator for life at Linux to take something of a sabbatical because, in his words, "I need to take a break to get help on how to behave differently and fix some issues in my tooling and workflow."

 While there's little doubt that he will spend some time working on his "tooling and workflow," the crux of his sabbatical centers on changing his behavior, mainly in how he interacts with other Linux developers.