14 DAY TRIAL // Linus Torvalds, Linux's architect and leading figure, has finally become an US citizen after spending more than a decade living there. The Finish-born programmer is responsible for creating Linux and sparking the open-source revolution, achieving a somewhat legendary status in the process.
Torvalds revealed the fact in passing in a comment on the Linux kernel mailing list. "I'll test that myself (but in a bit - I need to go do voter registration and socsec update first, though - I became a US citizen last week)," he said.
"We'd have had to renew our green cards in a year anyway, so it wasn't like we could avoid any paperwork - one way or another, we'd have to update our status," Torvalds told OregonLive.com. Torvalds lives near Portland, Oregon.
"And we've been in the US for almost 14 years, two of our kids were already US citizens due to being born here, and this is definitely home to us. So it was pretty much a no-brainer," he explained.
He also noted that the process was much more seamless than he would have expected. The whole thing went smooth and took a lot less time than he anticipated. Of course, the fact that he is Linus Torvalds, a leading tech figure, may have helped.
In fact, it was the fear of lengthy and convoluted process that kept him from applying for citizenship sooner, he expected it to take years and involve way too much effort.
And since he couldn't have had any trouble securing a green card, there was little incentive for him to want to become an US citizen, apart from not being able to vote.
He has talked about citizenship in the past, at least as far back as 2008, when he commented that he should have probably applied for citizenship some time before and that he was reluctant to go through the whole process.