Linus Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland Dec. 28, 1969. He was the creator of the Linux kernel which he started in 1991. Linus released the kernel under GNU GPL. Today he is the linux project coordinator. He personally wrote about 2% of the Linux kernel himself but there are thousands of people who contribute. He has been called the benevelont dictator of Linux. He is not as political as Richard Stallman and usually focuses on the workings of the Linux kernel rather than free and open source software politics. Torvalds is the one who also chose the Penguin as a mascot for Linux. Linus owns the trademark for Linux in the U.S. Torvalds also has his own blog and you can check it out here. It is nice that Linus has released his kernel under the GNU GPL. He even mentioned that releasing the Linux Kernel under the GNU general public license is one of the best things he did. Thank you Linus for starting the Linux kernel project.