Here’s a little experiment. Start a conversation about why open source and Portland go so well together. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Done? Okay.

Now, I’m not usually much of a betting guy. But in this case, I’m willing to bet that at some point in that conversation—for many of you—the inevitable “Well, you know, Linus Torvalds lives here” came up as some sort of qualifier. It did, right?

Of course it did. It just happens. And it happens with the vast majority of “Portland and open source” conversations that take place around here.

And while Linus living here doesn’t really prove anything one way or the other in terms of Portland and open source—especially because we rarely see him. It sounds good. And it seems to lend credence to our claim as the de facto hub of the open source world.

So in that same vein, I’m going to report on something that has absolutely nothing to do with open source or technology. But it does have to do with Linus and his living in Portland. You see, now our favorite claim to open source fame and creator of the Linux operating system has made his residence here in the Silicon Forest a little more official. Linus Torvalds is now a US citizen.

How do we know? Well, he happened to make an offhanded comment about his change in citizenship 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).

Network World has also picked up the story.

I wonder who he’ll get behind in the Oregon gubernatorial race?

Nothing on Linus’ personal blog, yet. But it’s a good one to have in your feed reader anyway.

(Image courtesy Randall Schwartz. Used under Creative Commons.)

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