The Linux Foundation has posted the second half of its long and thorough interview with Linux founder Linus Torvalds, part of the Foundation's "open voices" podcast. While the first part of the interview focused on the Linux development community, this time Torvalds sounds off on everything from patents and innovation to the future of Linux. The folks at Wired have written up a summary of what goes on in the podcast and Linus' main arguments. In short, Torvalds believes Linux has failed to take off to a significant extent on the desktop so far because it's too different from Windows. Torvalds sums up the problem in one short sentence: "If you act differently from Windows, even if you act in some ways better, it doesn't matter; better is worse if it's different." Interestingly, Torvalds also believes Microsoft is running into this very problem with Windows Vista. "I think one the reasons people are having issues with Vista now, is that it's much harder to-for one company-to kind of change the market and when the market has matured," Torvalds explains. Users' reluctance to change may nonetheless turn out to be an advantage for the open-source community. "Now you can't have one company that kind of tries to move the goal post," he says. "Because if it keeps trying to move the goal post, that's just going to irritate that company's own constituents." In other words, desktop Linux isn't in any great danger of being outpaced on the functionality front, because developers of major desktop operating systems like Microsoft and Apple must avoid trying to reinvent the wheel if they want their products to sell.

Whether you agree or disagree the interview makes a compelling read. There are audio clips available through the Linux Foundation as well as transcripts of part one and part two.