Most people don't remember (or weren't around to see) what it was like before Linux. IMHO Linus's biggest contribution to the world was the modern open source

Most people don't remember (or weren't around to see) what it was like before Linux. IMHO Linus's biggest contribution to the world was the modern open source development methodology. In my 4th year at university I did a project on Mach and was very excited to continue working with it through the HURD. At the time, getting up to date source code for the HURD required sending an email to the team and requesting it. I dutifully did so and was greeted with a reply asking for my CV. I sent it in (as bare as you might imagine it would be as a university student) and was denied access since they only wanted experienced kernel developers to work on the project. I've often regretted not saving that email. But this is the way it was back then. You waited until something was released to play with it, or you contacted the team to see if they would grant you access to the latest development code. Linus changed all that by giving ubiquitous access to the code and taking patches from anyone. It was a huge revelation. Keep in mind that this coincided with more open access to the internet, so his attitude was facilitated by the fact that you didn't need to rely on UUCP to slowly distribute code. More and more, people had access to FTP (and soon the web). The reason for Linux's success, IMHO, is down to that. Everyone flocked to Linux because it was obviously unencumbered by the BSD legal issues and Linus would look at any patch coming his way, regardless of who sent it. This is now de rigour -- to the point where I'm sure the vast majority of people using free software today believe that it's always been that way. For me, RMS invented the concept of free software. Linus showed how to actually make it work. There were other good projects at the time, but from my perspective nothing came close to Linux.