Linus Torvalds Earns U.S. Citizenship

Posted 09/15/2010 at 6:19am | by Paul Lilly

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Linus Torvalds, who has been living in the United States since 1997 and has two children born in America, is now officially an American citizen himself.

"Yeah, yeah, we should probably have done the citizenship thing a long time ago, since we've been here long enough (and two of the kids are U.S. citizens by virtue of being born here), but anybody who has had dealings with the INS will likely want to avoid any more of them, and maybe things have gotten better with a new name and changes, but nothing has really made feel like I really need that paperwork and headache again," Torvalds explained in a blog post.

In addition to fathering two children, Torvalds is also recognized as the father of Linux, the open source project he presented to the world in September, 1991 when he uploaded the first version of Linux, version 0.01. The rest, as they say, is history.

The right to vote played a part in Torvald's decision to finally become a U.S. citizen. In an interview with NetworkWorld.com, Torvalds pointed out that "Being an alien means that you can't vote, and seeing all the news being about the presidential election (and all the streets here locally littered with signs about the local school bond) tends to remind you about the issue."