Long-time rivals Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds meet for the first time, have dinner — 'No major kernel decisions were made, but maybe next dinner'

An extraordinary image has been shared on LinkedIn, capturing the first meeting between two legends of the tech world. In the center of the group photo, you can see Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds standing shoulder-to-shoulder - or actually they look more friendly than that. The happy pair, well known for their contrasting philosophies on the business of software, were enjoying the company of Microsoft Fellows Mark Russinovich (left) and David Cutler (right).

It is rather surprising that the kingpins behind Windows and Linux had never met previously, but we will take the host’s, Russinovich’s, word for it. Time usually mellows a man, and perhaps putting these two together at the same table would have been a recipe for trouble in decades past.

“I had the thrill of a lifetime, hosting dinner for Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds and David Cutler,” wrote Russinovich on LinkedIn. “Linus had never met Bill, and Dave had never met Linus. No major kernel decisions were made, but maybe next dinner ;)”

Many social media commenters were also taken aback by the mass of computer technology talent squeezed into one frame. The concentration of power, influence, and legacies might be off the scale for one photo. Some also pondered over what the tech world would be like now, if not for these men.

It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall at the dinner. Did the collected tech titans analyze and dissect matters in the field of tech? Or perhaps they went down the light and trivial conversational route, with tech topics sidelined by an unspoken consensus? We can only speculate.

Two worlds collide, a potted history

Bill Gates became an IT industry legend as the co-founder of Microsoft. He was pivotal to pioneering commercial software and personal computing ecosystems development from the mid-1970s onwards.

Gates stayed at the helm of Microsoft well into the heydays of Windows, but is now most famous for his charitable works. His comments on the tech industry can still stoke headlines, though. Recently, he was in the news for predicting the death of many careers at the hands of AI. He also seems to miss the 'brave' Pat Gelsinger’s leadership at Intel.

Linus Torvalds released the first version of the open-source Linux kernel back in September 1991. This non-commercial approach to advancing computing, especially software, contrasts with that of Gates and Microsoft. However, even though the rival Windows OS costs money and is openly derided in tech circles, the year of Linux hasn’t yet arrived.

Torvalds has a reputation for being a tech industry firebrand. In contrast with Gates’ take on AI, he considers it to be “90% marketing.” He also doesn’t seem to care about inflicting friendly fire damage on members of the Linux community, recently publicly raging against the “random turd files” he found in Linux 6.15-rc1.

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