Linus was right. ESR was an idiot. ESR did have 27 years of experience, during which he&#x27;s successfully accomplished nothing. He&#x27;s a very articulate idiot. He says stupid things very, very convincingly. But arguing with the likes of Linus or Richard, I&#x27;ve never seen him be right. Ever. He&#x27;s often won arguments, but he was wrong when he did so.<p>Linus built Linux. Then git. Track record counts. And he&#x27;s right in most discussions, including this one, when you dig into it.<p>Specifically in the context of version control, svn and cvs would have killed Linux compared to the mailing list. Linux needed bitkeeper, Mercurial, or git. Linus understood the problem, and invented the Right solution. git isn&#x27;t just clever. It&#x27;s freakishly brilliant at every level.