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Explain Linux with this rational... the most successful and possibly most innovative project of our lifetime.

• jcfrei 9y ago
  Linus started development at the University of Helsinki...
  • omgPhysics 9y ago
    He is also one of the biggest proponents of working only through online communication. He, as the sole contributor to Linux at that point with famed single line license, release linux to the open internet. The entire philosophy is based on the idea of: 1. Being open to skepticism (this includes being technically evaluated on your work, which is possible through public submission of that work) 2. Allowing people to work on the things at which they excel. If you don't subscribe to these ideas, it doesn't matter where you work, how you work or what you do. It will not be 'innovative'.
    • selectodude 9y ago
      Over 20 percent of kernel contributions come from Intel and Red Hat. Over 90 percent of patches are written by people who work for corporations. Linux wouldn't be 10 percent of what it is now if it relied solely on volunteers communicating on the LKML.
      • hutzlibu 9y ago
        Does it matter, that they work for corporation or on their own, when the topic was that the overall working process of Linux is mainly online? ation?p
        • selectodude 9y ago
          Sure it does. Most kernel development is done by developers working in an office. They don't have to brainstorm over the LKML.
          • alacombe 9y ago
            There has been historically more than one brainstorm happening on the LKML. Check the archives...
          • hutzlibu 9y ago
            But the coordination and submitting of the patches and their discussion then, is mostly done online and open.
• danans 9y ago
  Absolutely it is successful. But the original goal of Linux was to create a personal free OS that had feature parity with Unix. It wasn't solving a previously unsolved problem, because the requirements were already given by Unix. The stage of software that benefits the most from close collaboration defining the requirements in the first place. That's very hard to do in isolation, unless the requirement is trivial/obvious. No doubt, later on, Linux developers came up with innovative new-to-the-world features for the OS, but a lot of these were developed by collaborative institutions like universities, companies, and governments.
• randcraw 9y ago
  As much as I love Linux and GNU, neither is especially innovative. Just about every FOSS tool was invented elsewhere in a commercial setting before it was cloned or reinterpreted into open software. The question is whether novel products or services can arise among distributed cultures. In my 30+ years in this business (software R&D), I've seen lots of examples that it cannot and few/none that it can. Those few people who grok a new problem that needs a mousetrap when nobody else has ever seen a mouse, somehow they need to communicate this problem / opportunity to the scientists and engineers who must build that first trap. In my experience, this is a LOT easier done in person than remotely, especially if you don't already know your makers well. Until remote communication improves at least ten fold, addressing new problems remotely will remain vastly inferior to doing it locally.