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Story URL: http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,10005810,00.htm

Will Linus Torvalds be the next Governor of California?
No... but read on...

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Monday 01 September 2003

The latest bizarre twist in the race for Governor in California has seen Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux open source software, reportedly join the host of assorted candidates fighting to unseat current incumbent Gray Davis.

Torvalds apparently announced his intention to run for office in a message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml). He wrote: "There is a good state here, and it can use some improvement, but I'd like to try creating my own. This race is a great opportunity to try.

"California will be an open society and a wonderful place to live on my watch."

But sadly - the story, which appears to be too good to be true (especially for tired IT journalists at the tail end of the 'silly season') is indeed a hoax.

silicon.com started to receive emails from readers alerting us to the story, which has appeared on a number of news sites around the internet, but the source of this prank is geek site Newsforge which ran the story in its humour section over the weekend.

And we hold our hands up - for a short time silicon.com even ran the story on our site - but let's face it, with all the twists and turns already in the contest, it could have been true.

And who knows, hopefully the interest surrounding the story might encourage Linus to think about a move into politics.

Hollywood monolith Arnold Schwarzenegger is still the highest profile candidate in the race for Governor of California, but the entry of Torvalds into the arena would likely gain strong support among the geek community - who may previously have been thinking of casting their vote for either sci-fi legend Arnie, glamour model Angelyne or porn star Mary Carey who are among the other candidates.

Though the holy trinity of porn, science fiction and open source software may only serve to split the geek vote and it's unlikely that Torvalds would find much support among the average Joe and Jolene Public.

An even bigger obstacle to his candidacy may be the fact that the period for accepting nominations has already ended - making Torvalds' a late entry to the market more befitting of his long terms rivals over at Microsoft.

This is the latest in a string of hoaxes to capture the public and the media's imagination. Most recently there was the Microsoft iLoo which received a great deal of coverage in May - and more than a little embarrassment for the software giant who ummed and aahed for an unsettling amount of time about whether it was true or not..

And then, back in April there was a prankster who claimed his company was going to make use of a legal loop hole to turn the Netherlands into a safe haven for file-sharers.