4 ms·

GNU is special because without them, the whole system wouldn't exist. They did: 1. Most of the technical work on version 0.1 of having a working system. 2. Mo

by blagie 5y ago

GNU is special because without them, the whole system wouldn't exist. They did: 1. Most of the technical work on version 0.1 of having a working system. 2. Most of the ideological work 3. Most of the legal work (Linux is GPL too) They're the original "inventor." Linus finished building it, but without Linux, Herd would still eventually be ready, and we'd have the same thing, only a couple years later. I'm not trying to downplay this contribution; Linus and Linux are pretty special too. However, Linux wouldn't have happened without GNU; Linus could not have created all of that. Many people have since improved upon it. Like the Ship of Theseus, their original work is a tiny portion of the system in 2022. However, without them, the whole system would not exist. If that didn't happen, even things like Android, many iterations later, couldn't exist, at least in anything in their present form. "Open source" wouldn't exist either (which was created as a counter to "free software"). It's hard to overstate this contribution.

karteum 5y ago
> _but without Linux, Hurd would still eventually be ready_ "eventually", however with "if" we can imagine a lot of things. It could also been said that "if Linux didn't exist then maybe BSD would rule the world" ;)
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Commercial UNIXes would have kept leeching BSD code rather.
- blagie 5y ago
  The BSD model of the time had failed: * The concept of a share-alike license (invented by the FSF as far I know) was critical for the world at the time. I think we'd see models like MacOS (built on top of formerly open-source code), rather than Ubuntu. * The ideology behind it was critical as well. You might not agree with everything Richard said in the eighties, but everything else derives from it, either as an incremental change or as a response. One more major contribution -- which I do attribute to Linus -- was how to structure effecitve communities. The FSF development model consisted of a few individuals doing heroics. GNU/Linux was really the minimum viable product to iterate from.

by blagie 5y ago

karteum 5y ago

> _but without Linux, Hurd would still eventually be ready_ "eventually", however with "if" we can imagine a lot of things. It could also been said that "if Linux didn't exist then maybe BSD would rule the world" ;)

pjmlp 5y ago
Commercial UNIXes would have kept leeching BSD code rather.
blagie 5y ago
The BSD model of the time had failed: * The concept of a share-alike license (invented by the FSF as far I know) was critical for the world at the time. I think we'd see models like MacOS (built on top of formerly open-source code), rather than Ubuntu. * The ideology behind it was critical as well. You might not agree with everything Richard said in the eighties, but everything else derives from it, either as an incremental change or as a response. One more major contribution -- which I do attribute to Linus -- was how to structure effecitve communities. The FSF development model consisted of a few individuals doing heroics. GNU/Linux was really the minimum viable product to iterate from.