Mailing List Archive

OffTopic: Linux History (Re: Linux on-line bookstore)
Sorry to bug you all with this bit of Linux trivia, but I'm hoping to
clear up the lead-in statement on my bookstore page --- and Linus, if
you have time in your schedule for a few words, I'd be grateful for
your comments on this question of the origin of Linux.
I'd hoped to summarize the reason for Linux in as few words as possible.
My webpage states:
"it all started when Linus Torvalds, disgruntled by the slow
evolution of minix and GNU, wrote the first, free and public
unix-like kernel for the PC. The rest, as they say, is
history."
One correspondent has questioned whether this is accurate and I will
include the gist of our discussion below. From what John implies, BSD
was already free and public, but if this is the case, then why release
Linux at all? More importantly, if BSD was more 'free' than GPL, why
did the community embrace Linux?
All I really remember was anxiously awaiting the day I could afford my
first 386 and then a VGA card so I could finally free myself from DOS :)
>>>>> "JG" == John Goerzen <jgoerzen@southwind.net> writes:
JG> You state that Linus wrote the first free public kernel for the
JG> PC. That's not quite correct. Minix was already out, as was
JG> 386BSD and maybe even FreeBSD.
me >> It's my recollection that Minix was out, but not very usable.
JG> Yes, Minix was basically a "textbook" OS.
me >> Linus
>> took the Minix distribution and made it practical. This is
>> much the same story as Edison and the lightbulb.
>>
>> Wasn't there some problem with the BSD license? Short term
>> memory is always the first to go ;) Seems to me there was BSDI
>> which was for sale, but BSD either didn't run properly on the
>> 386 or had some dire problem with the licence which prompted
>> the community to turn to Linux.
JG> I am not aware of any such problem, but that doesn't mean it
JG> doesn't exist. One issue is that the BSD-style license is
JG> more permissive of what may be done with the code -- unlike
JG> the GPL, which guarantees that nobody can ever take over the
JG> code and release a derivative without releaseing the source.
Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@who.net> -------- http://visitweb.com/~garym/
TeleDynamics http://visitweb.com/teledynamics/ RR#1 Sauble Beach, Ont CAN
telecenter design -- telework systems -- intranet/extranet consulting
"You don't play what you know; you play what you hear." ----- Miles Davis
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Re: OffTopic: Linux History (Re: Linux on-line bookstore) [ In reply to ]
> One correspondent has questioned whether this is accurate and I will
> include the gist of our discussion below. From what John implies, BSD
> was already free and public, but if this is the case, then why release
> Linux at all? More importantly, if BSD was more 'free' than GPL, why
> did the community embrace Linux?
One issue is the exact timeline, which would be interesting to
reconstruct. As far as I recall, 386BSD 0.0 was released about the
same time as early Linux kernels. 386BSD was a complete system in the
sense that it had all tools (which Linux didn't, originally), but the
PC port was very flaky. For example, 386BSD 0.0 required a math
coprocessor to work. FreeBSD and NetBSD appeared months later.
Another issue is why Linus made Linux and why he released it. The
first answer is well known: Linus was playing with 386-based
scheduling (task state segment and so on), and the first
accomplishment were two tasks that wrote out 'A's and 'B's
concurrently. So Linus started this system not because he was
disgruntled by something, but because he wanted to learn something.
When he originally released it, there was a much stricter license on
it than GPL: Free for private use only. The change to GPL was made on
user's request. The BSD ownership was not very clear at that time,
AT&T was claiming that significant parts of BSD were owned by USL, so
you technically had to have a Unix source license to use 386BSD. This
was settled years later with 4.4BSD Lite, so today's BSD derivatives
don't have this problem.
Martin
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Re: OffTopic: Linux History (Re: Linux on-line bookstore) [ In reply to ]
On Sat, 16 May 1998, Martin von Loewis wrote:
> > One correspondent has questioned whether this is accurate and I will
> > include the gist of our discussion below. From what John implies, BSD
> > was already free and public, but if this is the case, then why release
> > Linux at all? More importantly, if BSD was more 'free' than GPL, why
> > did the community embrace Linux?
>
<snip>
> When he originally released it, there was a much stricter license on
> it than GPL: Free for private use only. The change to GPL was made on
> user's request. The BSD ownership was not very clear at that time,
> AT&T was claiming that significant parts of BSD were owned by USL, so
> you technically had to have a Unix source license to use 386BSD. This
> was settled years later with 4.4BSD Lite, so today's BSD derivatives
> don't have this problem.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You didn't give this enough attention. That is IMHO the real reason, back
then (and for several years) if you were using a *BSD then you were
breaking the law (according to AT&T).. Linux was the only clear choice.
>
> Martin
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