Linus Torvalds created Linux as a student in Helsinki, Finnland. He later took U.S. citizenship and lives in Portland, Oregon, TTBOMK.

Now on some level, the question makes less sense, because Linux as we know it now is an international proejct that thousands of developers from dozens of countries collaborated on. But perhaps most would agree that Torvalds, who serves as main integrator, has more say than others regarding the directions of Linux, as long as he is alive.

The open source property of Linux is more important to the question which OS a country's government should adopt: corporate systems are hard to scrutinize, whereas open source systems you can inspect and compile yourself, and it is a wise move of the French government to go in that direction. It will also save a lot of money, but that should not be the primary motive.

It is open source. Many companies which contribute to it are American, but nobody from America can tell you what you can or cannot do with it - unlike Microsoft or Apple with their proprietary OS being forced by US government.

The “main guy” is Finnish. He also got American citizenship recently, but given the US has increased attacks on naturalised citizens [0] and has a history of this [1] it’s not a solid foundation.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5677685/as-focus-shifts...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

Just Wiki Linus Torvalds my friend:

> Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland

> In 2004, Torvalds moved with his family from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon.

?

No, and no?

...what?

Yeah, he became American, just like Einstein, Fermi, Von Neumann, etc.

There's a big lesson for Europe there, everyone super productive and able to move to the US does so at the first opportunity.