It's just a matter of management style:  billions and billions worth of style

by David M. Keirsey

(under construction)

Introduction

Actually, USA TODAY is trying to say that Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds are not alike at all.  However, they are very wrong. Yes, they are very different, but in actual fact they are very similar also, and its not just their height.  They are both of the Rational temperament.

Linux versus Windows:  the David and Goliath of Operating Systems.  Both just lines of code for a computer, but the fate of massive corporations riding on the outcome. Billions and billions of dollars at stake.   Which operating system will become dominate in the Age of the Internet?  Its not only the issue of one set of computer codes replicating more, the question is what style of capitalist management is better at spreading the information age: proprietary software or open software.  In fact, the outcome of this debate could greatly effect the nature of the internet and the future of mankind.

How did these two operating systems come to this juncture in history?  Its a long history and complex, but an interesting read.  For one of  interesting parts of this tale is the operating systems mirror the temperament of their mentors: both Rationals, but after that, Bill Gates, a FieldMarshal, is quite different from Linus Torvalds, an Architect.  Both men are articulate and have put forth parts of their vision: Bill Gates, in his book Business at the Speed of Thought, and Linus Torvalds in his book Just for Fun: The story of an accidental revolutionary.

In the early 1990's Linus Torvalds, a young man in Finland entralled with computers, spent practically day and night for about 5 months to create a Intel 386 version of an operating system using the Posix specifications, akin to the versatile Unix operating system.  He originally only did it for his own education, interest, and use.  For various reasons he eventually posted his *source code* to it, and found others who were interested in developing and improving it, and soon became to be known as "Linux".  Being "free," Linux was developed and added upon to make it be very useful.  In fact, Linux is now both powerful and versatile but also very compact and efficient, and the copies of this free operating system are running in the millions.  It is now less costly and just as powerful as Windows 2000 or XP, an operating system built by the giant corporation, Bill Gates founded, Microsoft.

Bill Gates, a little older, had a similar interest in computers, and a decade earlier, had produced a version of the computer language BASIC for the first personal computer, the kit version of Intel 8080.  But Bill's interest was always making money in the business of computing.  He had started in the early 1980's. Very driven to succeed in business, Bill Gates parlayed his interest in computers, in particular the personal computer (PC), into building a corporation that wrote software for PCs.  With an opportunity presented to him by IBM, he was savy enough to buy (for fifty thousand dollars) a simple operating system for Intel 8080 called DOS, written by Gary Killdall. Gates and company made DOS work to IBM's specification, and licensed it to IBM.  This business move started Microsoft down the road to dominating the computer industry, with other big corporations, like IBM and Xerox, and young corporations, like Apple making mistakes in strategy, and losing their leading positions. With his technical savy about computer software and his business acumen to build a successful software corporation, Bill Gates eventually built Microsoft into the dominating computer software firm it is now today.

The Debate: Management Styles

"The stategic intelligence of Rationals is shown in their ability to work with systems, that is, to figure out complex ways and means to accomplish well-defined goals."  David W. Keirsey, in Please Understand Me II.

The Rational style of management.

Linus does not "manage" to manage, but his decisions make Linux a force to contend with, challenging a mega-billion corporation.  Darwinian capitalism.  Adam Smith.
 

Bill Gates, strategic intelligence is masterful.  Napoleon.  Challenges the US government. Worth Billions.  Hard Drive.  Corporate Capitalism