Linux History - December 2001

One SIG member attended a Greater Seattle Linux Users Group (GSLUG) meeting at North Seattle Community College and was impressed at how large the group was (40 people). Check them out at: www.gslug.org.

While there, he purchased a copy of Redmond Linux, loaded it onto his laptop computer and is pleased with that distribution. Redmond Linux is being assembled by an ex-Microsoft employees. Check them out at www.redmondlinux.org.

I have been reading a book about the history of Linux, Free for All by Peter Way. Linux is only 10 years old, but this book reviews the background history of Linux and open source software.

UNIX was developed in the 1970's. The first code was written by AT&T. Then much development was done at the University of California, Berkley. UNIX became popular for scientific computing and high end computers. AT&T required a hefty license fee for UNIX that ranged from $1000 - $250,000, depending on the power of the computer. Berkley was bound by nondisclosure agreements to not release AT&T UNIX code.

During the 1980's, on the East Coast, a computer science giant from MIT, Richard Stallman, was writing software, developing his GNU manifesto and GNU public license. He strongly believed in free, open source software and announced that he was working toward developing a free UNIX. His GNU public license (GPL) permitted people to take GPL software , sell it and modify it but required them to donate back modifications to GPL. Stallman wrote and released a high quality C-language compiler (gcc) and editor (EMACS) to GPL.

Some open source software has been released into the public domain without any restrictions. In many cases this software has been picked up, modified and marketed. There is nothing wrong with this, but this has not always worked out well for the public. In several cases 'Programmer A' has made one set of improvements, kept his improvements proprietary and marketed it, while 'Programmer B' has made other improvements, kept them proprietary and marketed them. The public is happy with 'Improvements A' and also likes 'Improvements B', but wishes that they were both available in one product and also wishes more improvements.

Software released under the GPL has all improvements funneled back into GPL. The improvements that the public likes best float to the top. Development of GPL software has occurred at a speedy rate. Improvements are driven by what the public wants.

Back at Berkley during the 1980's, computer scientists set about rewriting UNIX to completely replace the original AT&T UNIX code with open source code. The Berkley Computer Systems Research Group rewrote much of UNIX and released Network Release 1. Then they did more rewriting and released Network Release 2, which was almost all of UNIX. AT&T became concerned that this low cost UNIX software would undercut their UNIX license income and sued the University of California.

Another university professor, Tanenbaum, took Network Release 2 and rewrote the last remaining proprietary portions of UNIX and released minix, a UNIX clone, for $150. Less expensive, but not yet completely free. Tanenbaum wished to keep it simple and did not incorporate many public suggestions into minix.

Also during the 1980's the personal computer became more affordable. Millions were sold. Apple Macintosh and Microsoft DOS created millionaire programmers.

In 1991, while the Berkley UNIX was tied up in courts, while a large amount of UNIX applications had been released into public domain, and while an inexpensive minix was available, a Finnish computer science student also decided to write a free UNIX clone.

His name was Linus Torvalds and his UNIX clone has become the favorite around the world. Linus wrote much of the Linux kernel himself, but Linux became successful because he encouraged many others around the world to collaborate though the Internet. Linus was tireless in incorporating the improvements of many other programmers into the Linux kernel.

Once the AT&T-Berkley court case was settled (the decision was sealed and is not public) Berkley released their free UNIX clone. It has mutated into several versions, of which the most popular today is FreeBSD. How far will UNIX clones creep into computer operating system marketplace? No one can predict this, but both Linux and FreeBSD have grown exponentially during their first ten years.