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> Unix got its start as a volunteer project with no organizational recognition from Bell Labs, and Linus Torvalds started working on Linux as a hobby. I'm not
by spodek 9y ago
> Unix got its start as a volunteer project with no organizational recognition from Bell Labs, and Linus Torvalds started working on Linux as a hobby.
I'm not Richard Stallman, but I consider it worth mentioning the middle steps of GNU and the GPL that gave the hobby a useful endpoint.
- ekianjo 9y agoLinus only worked on the kernel, the coreutils from GNU were developed way, way earlier. Of course one cannot go without the other, but RMS and the folks behind GNU certainly deserve to be mentioned. Note that Linux had no clear license at the beginning and RMS influenced Linus to have it under GPL2 - that was the right decision at the time.
- nialv7 9y agoI thought Linus chose to use GPL2 himself? Can you back your statement up?
- ekianjo 9y ago> “I may not have seen the light,” writes Torvalds, reflecting on Stallman’s 1991 Polytechnic University speech and his subsequent decision to switch to the GPL. “But I guess something from his speech sunk in.” https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_as_in_Freedom_2.0/Chapter_09 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_as_in_Freedom_2.0/Chapte... I claimed RMS influenced Linus, but I did not mean he did it by talking to him personally.