I really enjoyed reading Greg Kroah-Hartman's keynote talk from OLS 2006.  (I'm not sure why I just stumbled across his 2006 keynote now.)  I enjoyed what he had to say and I enjoyed the format he put it in.  He created a web page with all of his slides as pictures interspersed with text.  I don't usually watch videos of talks but I found myself reading this talk to the end – the slides made it easier to read and made it feel more like Greg was talking to me instead of writing.

His main points?  Those that I remember are:

• Linux is plug and play and supports more devices than any other operating system.
• It also supports more hardware platforms than any other operating system.
• Linux is evolving not following some preset design, so forget about backwards compatibility, that would just make it a mess and stop evolution in its tracks.
• Closed source kernel modules are illegal.
• There's plenty of information and help for those looking to get started developing Linux.  Start with reviewing code!
• There aren't any regression tests – that's what all the people are for.

But read his talk, it's worth it: http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html.