Indeed. For one there was the 386BSD lawsuit, for another there was HURD. Torvalds himself has stated that if HURD had been usable at the time, he would not hav

Indeed. For one there was the 386BSD lawsuit, for another there was HURD. Torvalds himself has stated that if HURD had been usable at the time, he would not have bothered working on Linux. Honestly, back when Linux started getting momentum, RMS' GNU/Linux argument had merit. Most of the stuff people where running on top of Linux, never mind using to develop Linux, came from the GNU project.