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"Without him, Linus might have chosen to have kept Linux closed-source" [citation needed] Linux 0.01 was released under a custom license, and IIRC the switch
by groby_b 7y ago
"Without him, Linus might have chosen to have kept Linux closed-source"
[citation needed]
Linux 0.01 was released under a custom license, and IIRC the switch to GPL was under 0.12. The original inspiration was - if there was any beyond "I have a 386, I must write a kernel" - Minix, not GNU. Which was designated a learning OS. And comp.os.minix was where Linus first talked about Linux publicly.
The idea that "without Stallman, he might have kept it closed-source" is somewhat far fetched.
- type0 7y agoWithout Stallman it probably would have chosen BSD style license and not GPL2. We can only speculate how likely or unlikely we would get the tivoization of Linux in that case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
- finnthehuman 7y agoAll I know is what I heard in linus’ debconf talk, but that’s enough to know you’re just guessing.