Saying Torvalds 'made everything possible' is technically true, but a bit misleading. If there was no Linux kernel, the free software project would have taken m

Saying Torvalds 'made everything possible' is technically true, but a bit misleading. If there was no Linux kernel, the free software project would have taken much longer, but without the GNU userspace the kernel would have been not much more than a curiosity. There's still more GNU code in your average Linux distro than anything else.[0] People forget how much impact the lunatic fringe have on the rest of us. Before the free software movement, it would have seemed insane for a company to give away their code for free -- there was no precedent for it. When you shift the extremes, you also change what counts as being 'moderate'. Would anyone have taken Canonical's business model seriously twenty years ago? TL;DR: We need people like Stallman to make the rest of us look less crazy. [0] http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html