[pcote]

> The fact that I didn’t really know where it would end up meant that I was perhaps more open to outside suggestions and influence than I would have been if I had a very good idea of what I wanted to accomplish.

Not sure if I'm projecting or not but I think I've noticed this too. When I do projects that have some kind of grand goal, few people seem to care and I find I work mostly in isolation. Lots of pride and not a lot of fun.

On the other hand, when I do a project where the thinking is "Let's screw around, quickly throw stuff out there, and see how people react to it", I tend to get a lot more interesting feedback.

Even for smart people, there's something about a friendly game of "idiot ball" that seems to attract other people to come out and play too. Torvalds probably plays that game better than most.