Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on May 19, 2004 09:56 AM
It is true that Linus has a lot to do with Linux. If he were not around, it would not exist. At least it is highly unlikely it would be called Linux. It may be called Horde - the GNU kernel. That project was started when Linus was still in High School. RMS is in Linux too. If here were not around Linux probably wouldn't exist either. Clearly he built a good foundation, a free software foundation.
Having said that, what exactly did he invent if anything? People who know me say I'm a die hard Linux fan. Whatever the question is - Linux is the answer. Did he invent the kernel? No, Unix had a similar one and I wrote a very similar one as a College OS project (ran on the PDP-11). Horde is very similar as well, as is MACH and many others. The kernel that we all use today is really not his either. It has been modified by many people over the years. All the changes I understand are all approved by him, however.
Linus is a guy who said to send me code. Unlike Gnu and I criticized them all the way back in 1985 about that. They didn't want anyone duplicating any effort. A noble cause to be sure, however their mechanism for doing that sucked big time and they never answered mail. I know, I waited 3 years for an answer and never got one, even writting to them throughout that period. Linus was different - just send it to him as long as it wasn't copyrighted stuff. You had to write it. Soon he was getting more code than you could imagine. All this before GHW Bush released the internet to the public in 1992. Yes, GHW Bush released the internet, not Clinton. It was one of the last things he did as President. And no, Algore had nothing to do with it except he slept on a comittee that heard the funding a few times. In fact he tried to kill it a couple of times if I recall correctly.
So I wouldn't say he "invented" Linux, no one person did. He had probably one of the biggest hands in making it what it is today, however there are thousands of us who wrote code that make it what it is today. Even the idea isn't his. It is the union of all of the good things that we learned in computer science from the 1960's on. Don Kneuth, Kernignham and Richie, Asreal Rosenfeld, Aho, Sethi, and on and on... Things that live in Unix because they were put into Unix from BSD (i.e. University of California owns BSD and those ideas, not the old USL and now SCO/Novell). Things like sockets, pipes, fork and vfork.
As much as I hate the idea, the notion is technically correct, Linus didn't "invent" linux by the definition of what invent means. I don't think he ever claimed that. He assembled it from code donated to him by others and his own code. He oversaw the construction and addition of all of the structures that make up the kernel and utilities. That is not to be taken lightly. He must be a superman and I don't know how he has done it over the years.
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Some truth in it
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 19, 2004 09:56 AMHaving said that, what exactly did he invent if anything? People who know me say I'm a die hard Linux fan. Whatever the question is - Linux is the answer. Did he invent the kernel? No, Unix had a similar one and I wrote a very similar one as a College OS project (ran on the PDP-11). Horde is very similar as well, as is MACH and many others. The kernel that we all use today is really not his either. It has been modified by many people over the years. All the changes I understand are all approved by him, however.
Linus is a guy who said to send me code. Unlike Gnu and I criticized them all the way back in 1985 about that. They didn't want anyone duplicating any effort. A noble cause to be sure, however their mechanism for doing that sucked big time and they never answered mail. I know, I waited 3 years for an answer and never got one, even writting to them throughout that period. Linus was different - just send it to him as long as it wasn't copyrighted stuff. You had to write it. Soon he was getting more code than you could imagine. All this before GHW Bush released the internet to the public in 1992. Yes, GHW Bush released the internet, not Clinton. It was one of the last things he did as President. And no, Algore had nothing to do with it except he slept on a comittee that heard the funding a few times. In fact he tried to kill it a couple of times if I recall correctly.
So I wouldn't say he "invented" Linux, no one person did. He had probably one of the biggest hands in making it what it is today, however there are thousands of us who wrote code that make it what it is today. Even the idea isn't his. It is the union of all of the good things that we learned in computer science from the 1960's on. Don Kneuth, Kernignham and Richie, Asreal Rosenfeld, Aho, Sethi, and on and on... Things that live in Unix because they were put into Unix from BSD (i.e. University of California owns BSD and those ideas, not the old USL and now SCO/Novell). Things like sockets, pipes, fork and vfork.
As much as I hate the idea, the notion is technically correct, Linus didn't "invent" linux by the definition of what invent means. I don't think he ever claimed that. He assembled it from code donated to him by others and his own code. He oversaw the construction and addition of all of the structures that make up the kernel and utilities. That is not to be taken lightly. He must be a superman and I don't know how he has done it over the years.
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