History of Linux
Encyclopedia
The History of Linux began in 1991 with the commencement of a personal project by a Finnish
student, Linus Torvalds
, to create a new operating system kernel.
Since then the resulting Linux kernel
has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code
in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to its state in 2009 of over 370 megabyte
s of source under the GNU General Public License
.
operating system was conceived and implemented by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (both of AT&T Bell Laboratories) in 1969 and first released in 1970. Its availability and portability
caused it to be widely adopted, copied and modified by academic institutions and businesses. Its design became influential to authors of other systems.
In 1983, Richard Stallman
started the GNU project
with the goal of creating a free
UNIX-like
operating system. As part of this work, he wrote the GNU General Public License
(GPL). By the early 1990s there was almost enough available software to create a full operating system. However, the GNU kernel, called Hurd
, failed to attract enough attention from developers leaving GNU incomplete.
Another free operating system project, initially released in 1977, was the Berkeley Software Distribution
(BSD). This was developed by UC Berkeley from the 6th edition of Unix
from AT&T. Since BSD contained Unix code that AT&T owned, AT&T filed a lawsuit (USL v. BSDi
) in the early 1990s against the University of California. This strongly limited the development and adoption of BSD.
In 1985, Intel released the 80386, the first x86 microprocessor with 32-bit
instruction set
and MMU
with paging
.
In 1986, Maurice J. Bach, of AT&T Bell Labs
, published The Design of the UNIX Operating System. This definitive description principally covered the System V Release 2 kernel, with some new features from Release 3 and BSD.
MINIX
, a Unix-like system intended for academic use, was released by Andrew S. Tanenbaum
in 1987. While source code for the system was available, modification and redistribution were restricted. In addition, MINIX's 16-bit
design was not well adapted to the 32-bit
features of the increasingly cheap and popular Intel 386 architecture for personal computers.
These factors and the lack of a widely adopted, free
kernel provided the impetus for Torvalds's starting his project. He has stated that if either the GNU
or 386BSD
kernels were available at the time, he likely would not have written his own.
In 1991, in Helsinki
, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became the Linux kernel
. It was initially a terminal emulator
, which Torvalds used to access the large UNIX servers of the university. He wrote the program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 processor. Development was done on MINIX
using the GNU C compiler
, which is still the main choice for compiling Linux today (although the code can be built with other compilers, such as the Intel C Compiler).
As Torvalds wrote in his book Just for Fun
, he eventually realized that he had written an operating system kernel. On 25 August 1991, he announced this system in a Usenet
posting to the newsgroup
"comp.os.minix.":
Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention Freax, a portmanteau of "freak", "free", and "x" (as an allusion to Unix). During the start of his work on the system, he stored the files under the name "Freax" for about half of a year. Torvalds had already considered the name "Linux," but initially dismissed it as too egotistical.
In order to facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server
(ftp.funet.fi) of FUNET
in September 1991. Ari Lemmke
, Torvald's coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology
(HUT) who was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name. So, he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux".
To demonstrate how the word "Linux" should be pronounced (ˈlɪnəks ), Torvalds included an audio guide with the kernel source code.
The software to use with the kernel was software developed as part of the GNU project
licensed under the GNU General Public License
, a free software
license. The first release of the Linux kernel, Linux 0.01, included a binary of GNU's Bash shell.
In the "Notes for linux release 0.01", Torvalds lists the GNU software that is required to run Linux:
In 1992, he suggested releasing the kernel under the GNU General Public License
. He first announced this decision in the release notes of version 0.12. In the middle of December 1992 he published version 0.99 using the GNU GPL.
Linux and GNU developers worked to integrate GNU components with Linux to make a fully functional and free operating system.
Torvalds has stated, “making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.”
project began calling its product Debian GNU/Linux. In May 1996, Richard Stallman published the editor Emacs
19.31, in which the type of system was renamed from Linux to Lignux. This spelling was intended to refer specifically to the combination of GNU and Linux, but this was soon abandoned in favor of "GNU/Linux".
This name garnered varying reactions. The GNU and Debian projects use the name, although most people simply use the term "Linux" to refer to the combination.
Torvalds announced in 1996 that there would be a mascot for Linux, a penguin. This was due the fact when they were about to select the mascot, Torvalds did mention he was bitten by a Little Penguin on a visit to the National Zoo & Aquarium, Canberra, Australia. Larry Ewing
provided the original draft of today's well known mascot based on this description. The name Tux
was suggested by James Hughes as derivative of Torvalds' UniX.
and Marcelo Tosatti
. Cox maintained version 2.2 of the kernel until it was discontinued at the end of 2003. Likewise, Tosatti maintained version 2.4 of the kernel until the middle of 2006. Andrew Morton
steers the development and administration of the 2.6 kernel, which was released on 18 December 2003 in its first stable incarnation. Also the older branches are still constantly improved.
It is released both by organized projects such as Debian
, and by projects connected directly with companies such as Fedora and openSUSE
. The members of the respective projects meet at various conferences and fairs, in order to exchange ideas. One of the largest of these fairs is the LinuxTag
in Germany
(currently in Berlin
), where about 10,000 people assemble annually, in order to discuss Linux and the projects associated with it.
On January 22, 2007, OSDL and the Free Standards Group
merged to form The Linux Foundation, narrowing their respective focuses to that of promoting GNU/Linux
in competition with Microsoft Windows
.
supports Linux by the development and LGPL licensing of Qt, which makes the development of KDE
possible, and by employing some of the X and KDE developers.
, recognized computer scientist and author of the Minix
microkernel
system, wrote a Usenet article on the newsgroup comp.os.minix with the title "Linux is obsolete", which marked the beginning of a famous debate about the structure of the then-recent Linux kernel. Among the most significant criticisms were that:
Tanenbaum's prediction that Linux would become outdated within a few years and replaced by GNU Hurd
(which he considered to be more modern) proved incorrect. Linux has been ported to all major platforms and its open development model has led to an exemplary pace of development. In contrast, GNU Hurd has not yet reached the level of stability that would allow it to be used on a production server. His dismissal of the Intel line of 386 processors as 'weird' has also proven short-sighted, as the x86 series of processors and the Intel Corporation
would later become near ubiquitous in personal computers.
, Kenneth Brown
claims that Torvalds illegally copied code from MINIX. These claims have been refuted by Tanenbaum:
The book's claims, methodology and references were seriously questioned and in the end it was never released and was delisted from the distributor's site.
. This was a short essay by a Microsoft developer that sought to lay out the threats posed to Microsoft by free software
and identified strategies to counter these perceived threats. However the Free Software Foundation
issued a statement that Microsoft's production of proprietary software
is bad for software users because it denies users "their rightful freedom."
Competition entered a new phase in the beginning of 2004, when Microsoft
published results from customer case studies evaluating the use of Windows vs. Linux under the name “Get the Facts” on its own web page. Based on inquiries, research analysts, and some Microsoft sponsored investigations, the case studies claimed that enterprise use of Linux on servers compared unfavorably to the use of Windows in terms of reliability, security, and total cost of ownership
.
In response, commercial Linux distributors produced their own studies, surveys and testimonials to counter Microsoft's campaign. Novell
's web-based campaign at the end of 2004 was entitled “Unbending the truth” and sought to outline the advantages as well as dispelling the widely publicized legal liabilities of Linux deployment (particularly in light of the SCO v IBM case). Novell particularly referenced the Microsoft studies in many points. IBM also published a series of studies under the title “The Linux at IBM competitive advantage” to again parry Microsoft's campaign. Red Hat had a campaign called “Truth Happens” aimed at letting the performance of the product speak for itself, rather than advertising the product by studies.
In the autumn of 2006, Novell and Microsoft announced an agreement to co-operate on software interoperability and patent protection. This included an agreement that customers of either Novell or Microsoft may not be sued by the other company for patent infringement. This patent protection was also expanded to non-free software developers. The last part was criticized because it only included non-commercial developers.
In July 2009, Microsoft submitted 22,000 lines of source code to the Linux kernel under the GPLV2 license, which were subsequently accepted. Although this has been referred to as "an historic move" and as a possible bellwether of an improvement in Microsoft's corporate attitudes toward Linux and open-source software, the decision was not altogether altruistic, as it promised to lead to significant competitive advantages for Microsoft and avoided legal action against Microsoft. Microsoft was actually compelled to make the code contribution when Vyatta
principal engineer and Linux contributor Stephen Hemminger discovered that Microsoft had incorporated a Hyper-V network driver, with GPL-licenced open source components, statically linked to closed-source binaries in contravention of the GPL licence. Microsoft contributed the drivers to rectify the licence violation, although the company attempted to portray it as a charitable act, rather than one to avoid legal action against it. In the past Microsoft had termed Linux a "cancer" and "communist".
accused IBM of violating their copyright on UNIX by transferring code from UNIX to Linux. SCO claims ownership of the copyrights on UNIX and a lawsuit was filed against IBM. Red Hat has countersued and SCO has since filed other related lawsuits. At the same time as their lawsuit, SCO began selling Linux licenses to users who did not want to risk a possible complaint on the part of SCO. Since Novell
also claims the copyrights to UNIX, it filed suit against SCO.
SCO has since filed for bankruptcy.
and was granted the trademark
to the name, which he transferred to Linux International. Protection of the trademark was later administered by a dedicated foundation, the non-profit Linux Mark Institute
. In 2000, Linus Torvalds specified the basic rules for the assignment of the licenses. This means that anyone who offers a product or a service with the name Linux must possess a license for it, which can be obtained through a unique purchase.
In June 2005, a new controversy developed over the use of royalties generated from the use of the Linux trademark. The Linux Mark Institute, which represents Linus Torvalds' rights, announced a price increase from 500 to 5,000 dollars for the use of the name. This step was justified as being needed to cover the rising costs of trademark protection.
In response to this increase, the community became displeased, which is why Linus Torvalds made an announcement on 21 August 2005, in order to dissolve the misunderstandings. In an e-mail he described the current situation as well as the background in detail and also dealt with the question of who had to pay license costs:
The Linux Mark Institute has since begun to offer a free, perpetual worldwide sublicense.
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
student, Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
, to create a new operating system kernel.
Since then the resulting Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to its state in 2009 of over 370 megabyte
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
s of source under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
.
Events leading to creation
The UnixUnix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
operating system was conceived and implemented by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (both of AT&T Bell Laboratories) in 1969 and first released in 1970. Its availability and portability
Software portability
Portability in high-level computer programming is the usability of the same software in different environments. The prerequirement for portability is the generalized abstraction between the application logic and system interfaces...
caused it to be widely adopted, copied and modified by academic institutions and businesses. Its design became influential to authors of other systems.
In 1983, Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
started the GNU project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
with the goal of creating a free
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
UNIX-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating system. As part of this work, he wrote the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(GPL). By the early 1990s there was almost enough available software to create a full operating system. However, the GNU kernel, called Hurd
GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd is a free software Unix-like replacement for the Unix kernel, released under the GNU General Public License. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation...
, failed to attract enough attention from developers leaving GNU incomplete.
Another free operating system project, initially released in 1977, was the Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
(BSD). This was developed by UC Berkeley from the 6th edition of Unix
Version 6 Unix
Sixth Edition Unix, also called Version 6 Unix or just V6, was the first version of the Unix operating system to see wide release outside Bell Labs. It was released in May 1975 and, like its direct predecessor, targeted the DEC PDP-11 family of minicomputers...
from AT&T. Since BSD contained Unix code that AT&T owned, AT&T filed a lawsuit (USL v. BSDi
USL v. BSDi
USL v. BSDi was a lawsuit brought in the United States in 1992 by Unix System Laboratories against Berkeley Software Design, Inc and the Regents of the University of California over intellectual property related to UNIX...
) in the early 1990s against the University of California. This strongly limited the development and adoption of BSD.
In 1985, Intel released the 80386, the first x86 microprocessor with 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
instruction set
Instruction set
An instruction set, or instruction set architecture , is the part of the computer architecture related to programming, including the native data types, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external I/O...
and MMU
Memory management unit
A memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to memory requested by the CPU...
with paging
Paging
In computer operating systems, paging is one of the memory-management schemes by which a computer can store and retrieve data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In the paging memory-management scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage in same-size blocks called...
.
In 1986, Maurice J. Bach, of AT&T Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
, published The Design of the UNIX Operating System. This definitive description principally covered the System V Release 2 kernel, with some new features from Release 3 and BSD.
MINIX
Minix
MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel....
, a Unix-like system intended for academic use, was released by Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum is a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is best known as the author of MINIX, a free Unix-like operating system for teaching purposes, and for his computer science textbooks, regarded as standard texts in the...
in 1987. While source code for the system was available, modification and redistribution were restricted. In addition, MINIX's 16-bit
16-bit
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
design was not well adapted to the 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
features of the increasingly cheap and popular Intel 386 architecture for personal computers.
These factors and the lack of a widely adopted, free
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
kernel provided the impetus for Torvalds's starting his project. He has stated that if either the GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
or 386BSD
386BSD
386BSD, sometimes called "Jolix", was a free Unix-like operating system based on BSD, first released in 1992. It ran on PC compatible computer systems based on the Intel 80386 microprocessor...
kernels were available at the time, he likely would not have written his own.
The creation of Linux
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
. It was initially a terminal emulator
Terminal emulator
A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture....
, which Torvalds used to access the large UNIX servers of the university. He wrote the program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 processor. Development was done on MINIX
Minix
MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel....
using the GNU C compiler
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...
, which is still the main choice for compiling Linux today (although the code can be built with other compilers, such as the Intel C Compiler).
As Torvalds wrote in his book Just for Fun
Just for Fun
Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary is a humorous autobiography of Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, co-written with David Diamond. The book explains Linus' view of himself, the free software movement and the development of Linux.Linus's contribution to the...
, he eventually realized that he had written an operating system kernel. On 25 August 1991, he announced this system in a Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
posting to the newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
"comp.os.minix.":
The name
In order to facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server
File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
(ftp.funet.fi) of FUNET
FUNET
FUNET is the Finnish University and Research Network, a backbone network providing Internet connections for Finnish universities and polytechnics as well as other research facilities. It is governed by the state-owned CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd. The FUNET project started in December 1983 and...
in September 1991. Ari Lemmke
Ari Lemmke
Ari Lemmke in Finland is the person who gave the Linux kernel its name.Linus Torvalds had planned to have it named Freax . Ari encouraged him to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded...
, Torvald's coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology
Helsinki University of Technology
Aalto University School of Science and Technology , was the temporary name for Helsinki University of Technology during the process of forming the Aalto University...
(HUT) who was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name. So, he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux".
To demonstrate how the word "Linux" should be pronounced (ˈlɪnəks ), Torvalds included an audio guide with the kernel source code.
Linux under the GNU GPL
Torvalds first published the Linux kernel under its own licence, which had a restriction on commercial activity.The software to use with the kernel was software developed as part of the GNU project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
licensed under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, a free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
license. The first release of the Linux kernel, Linux 0.01, included a binary of GNU's Bash shell.
In the "Notes for linux release 0.01", Torvalds lists the GNU software that is required to run Linux:
In 1992, he suggested releasing the kernel under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. He first announced this decision in the release notes of version 0.12. In the middle of December 1992 he published version 0.99 using the GNU GPL.
Linux and GNU developers worked to integrate GNU components with Linux to make a fully functional and free operating system.
Torvalds has stated, “making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.”
GNU/Linux naming controversy
The designation "Linux" was initially used by Torvalds only for the Linux kernel. The kernel was, however, frequently used together with other software, especially that of the GNU project. This quickly became the most popular adoption of GNU software. In June 1994 in GNU's bulletin, Linux was referred to as a "free UNIX clone", and the DebianDebian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
project began calling its product Debian GNU/Linux. In May 1996, Richard Stallman published the editor Emacs
Emacs
Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
19.31, in which the type of system was renamed from Linux to Lignux. This spelling was intended to refer specifically to the combination of GNU and Linux, but this was soon abandoned in favor of "GNU/Linux".
This name garnered varying reactions. The GNU and Debian projects use the name, although most people simply use the term "Linux" to refer to the combination.
Official mascot
Larry Ewing
Larry Ewing is a U.S. computer programmer who is known as the creator of the Linux mascot, Tux. He also created the Ximian monkey logo and is involved in:*F-Spot: a project aiming to "manage all your digital photography needs."...
provided the original draft of today's well known mascot based on this description. The name Tux
Tux
Tux is a penguin character and the official mascot of the Linux kernel. Originally created as an entry to a Linux logo competition, Tux is the most commonly used icon for Linux, although different Linux distributions depict Tux in various styles. In video games featuring the character, female...
was suggested by James Hughes as derivative of Torvalds' UniX.
Kernel
There are many other well-known maintainers for the Linux kernel beside Torvalds such as Alan CoxAlan Cox
Alan Cox is a British computer programmer who formerly maintained the 2.2 branch of the Linux kernel and continues to be heavily involved in the development of the Linux kernel, an association that dates back to 1991...
and Marcelo Tosatti
Marcelo Tosatti
Marcelo Wormsbecker Tosatti is a Linux kernel developer.He became the maintainer of the stable 2.4 kernel series in November 2001 when he was 18 years old, replacing Alan Cox...
. Cox maintained version 2.2 of the kernel until it was discontinued at the end of 2003. Likewise, Tosatti maintained version 2.4 of the kernel until the middle of 2006. Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton (computer programmer)
Andrew Keith Paul Morton is an Australian software engineer, best known as one of the lead developers of the Linux kernel...
steers the development and administration of the 2.6 kernel, which was released on 18 December 2003 in its first stable incarnation. Also the older branches are still constantly improved.
Community
The largest part of the work on Linux is performed by the community: the thousands of programmers around the world that use Linux and send their suggested improvements to the maintainers. Various companies have also helped not only with the development of the Kernels, but also with the writing of the body of auxiliary software, which is distributed with Linux.It is released both by organized projects such as Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
, and by projects connected directly with companies such as Fedora and openSUSE
OpenSUSE
openSUSE is a general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported openSUSE Project and sponsored by SUSE...
. The members of the respective projects meet at various conferences and fairs, in order to exchange ideas. One of the largest of these fairs is the LinuxTag
LinuxTag
LinuxTag is a Free Software expo with an emphasis on Linux , held every summer in Germany. It is relatively large, claiming that it is the largest expo of this kind in Europe, drawing visitors from many countries....
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
(currently in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
), where about 10,000 people assemble annually, in order to discuss Linux and the projects associated with it.
Open Source Development Lab and Linux Foundation
The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) was created in the year 2000, and is an independent nonprofit organization which pursues the goal of optimizing Linux for employment in data centers and in the carrier range. It served as sponsored working premises for Linus Torvalds and also for Andrew Morton (until the middle of 2006 when Morton transferred to Google). Torvalds works full-time on behalf of OSDL, developing the Linux Kernels.On January 22, 2007, OSDL and the Free Standards Group
Free Standards Group
The Free Standards Group was an industry non-profit consortium chartered to primarily specify and drive the adoption of open source standards.All standards developed by the Free Standards Group were released under open terms and test suites, sample implementations and other software were released...
merged to form The Linux Foundation, narrowing their respective focuses to that of promoting GNU/Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
in competition with Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
.
Companies
Despite being open-source, a few companies profit from Linux. These companies, most of which are also members of the Open Source Development Lab, invest substantial resources into the advancement and development of Linux, in order to make it suited for various application areas. This includes hardware donations for driver developers, cash donations for people who develop Linux software, and the employment of Linux programmers at the company. Some examples are IBM and HP, which use Linux on their own servers, and Red Hat, which maintains its own distribution. Likewise NokiaNokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
supports Linux by the development and LGPL licensing of Qt, which makes the development of KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
possible, and by employing some of the X and KDE developers.
"Linux is obsolete"
In 1992 Andrew S. TanenbaumAndrew S. Tanenbaum
Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum is a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is best known as the author of MINIX, a free Unix-like operating system for teaching purposes, and for his computer science textbooks, regarded as standard texts in the...
, recognized computer scientist and author of the Minix
Minix
MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel....
microkernel
Microkernel
In computer science, a microkernel is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system . These mechanisms include low-level address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication...
system, wrote a Usenet article on the newsgroup comp.os.minix with the title "Linux is obsolete", which marked the beginning of a famous debate about the structure of the then-recent Linux kernel. Among the most significant criticisms were that:
- The kernel was monolithicMonolithic kernelA monolithic kernel is an operating system architecture where the entire operating system is working in the kernel space and alone as supervisor mode...
and thus old-fashioned. - The lack of portabilityPortingIn computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
, due to the use of exclusive features of the Intel 386 processor. "Writing a new operating system that is closely tied to any particular piece of hardware, especially a weird one like the Intel line, is basically wrong." - There was no strict control of the source code by any individual person.
- Linux employed a set of features which were useless (Tanenbaum believed that multithreaded file systemFile systemA file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...
s were simply a "performance hack").
Tanenbaum's prediction that Linux would become outdated within a few years and replaced by GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd is a free software Unix-like replacement for the Unix kernel, released under the GNU General Public License. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation...
(which he considered to be more modern) proved incorrect. Linux has been ported to all major platforms and its open development model has led to an exemplary pace of development. In contrast, GNU Hurd has not yet reached the level of stability that would allow it to be used on a production server. His dismissal of the Intel line of 386 processors as 'weird' has also proven short-sighted, as the x86 series of processors and the Intel Corporation
Intel Corporation
Intel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
would later become near ubiquitous in personal computers.
Samizdat
In his unpublished book SamizdatSamizdat (book)
Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code is a book by Kenneth Brown, which was prereleased in May 2004 and was to be published later that year by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution...
, Kenneth Brown
Kenneth Brown (author)
Kenneth P. Brown, Jr. is an American lobbyist and author, and the former president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution , a think tank based in Arlington, Virginia....
claims that Torvalds illegally copied code from MINIX. These claims have been refuted by Tanenbaum:
The book's claims, methodology and references were seriously questioned and in the end it was never released and was delisted from the distributor's site.
Competition from Microsoft
Although Torvalds has said that Microsoft's feeling threatened by Linux in the past was of no consequence to him, the Microsoft and Linux camps had a number of antagonistic interactions between 1997 and 2001. This became quite clear for the first time in 1998, when the first Halloween document was brought to light by Eric S. RaymondEric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond , often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond was for a number of years frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement...
. This was a short essay by a Microsoft developer that sought to lay out the threats posed to Microsoft by free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and identified strategies to counter these perceived threats. However the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
issued a statement that Microsoft's production of proprietary software
Proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
is bad for software users because it denies users "their rightful freedom."
Competition entered a new phase in the beginning of 2004, when Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
published results from customer case studies evaluating the use of Windows vs. Linux under the name “Get the Facts” on its own web page. Based on inquiries, research analysts, and some Microsoft sponsored investigations, the case studies claimed that enterprise use of Linux on servers compared unfavorably to the use of Windows in terms of reliability, security, and total cost of ownership
Total cost of ownership
Total cost of ownership is a financial estimate whose purpose is to help consumers and enterprise managers determine direct and indirect costs of a product or system...
.
In response, commercial Linux distributors produced their own studies, surveys and testimonials to counter Microsoft's campaign. Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
's web-based campaign at the end of 2004 was entitled “Unbending the truth” and sought to outline the advantages as well as dispelling the widely publicized legal liabilities of Linux deployment (particularly in light of the SCO v IBM case). Novell particularly referenced the Microsoft studies in many points. IBM also published a series of studies under the title “The Linux at IBM competitive advantage” to again parry Microsoft's campaign. Red Hat had a campaign called “Truth Happens” aimed at letting the performance of the product speak for itself, rather than advertising the product by studies.
In the autumn of 2006, Novell and Microsoft announced an agreement to co-operate on software interoperability and patent protection. This included an agreement that customers of either Novell or Microsoft may not be sued by the other company for patent infringement. This patent protection was also expanded to non-free software developers. The last part was criticized because it only included non-commercial developers.
In July 2009, Microsoft submitted 22,000 lines of source code to the Linux kernel under the GPLV2 license, which were subsequently accepted. Although this has been referred to as "an historic move" and as a possible bellwether of an improvement in Microsoft's corporate attitudes toward Linux and open-source software, the decision was not altogether altruistic, as it promised to lead to significant competitive advantages for Microsoft and avoided legal action against Microsoft. Microsoft was actually compelled to make the code contribution when Vyatta
Vyatta
Vyatta manufactures an open source router/firewall/VPN product for Internet Protocol networks . A free download of Vyatta has been available since March 2006. The system is a specialized Debian-based Linux distribution with networking applications such as Quagga, OpenVPN, and many others...
principal engineer and Linux contributor Stephen Hemminger discovered that Microsoft had incorporated a Hyper-V network driver, with GPL-licenced open source components, statically linked to closed-source binaries in contravention of the GPL licence. Microsoft contributed the drivers to rectify the licence violation, although the company attempted to portray it as a charitable act, rather than one to avoid legal action against it. In the past Microsoft had termed Linux a "cancer" and "communist".
SCO
In March 2003, the SCO GroupSCO Group
TSG Group, Inc. is a software company formerly called The SCO Group, Caldera Systems, and Caldera International. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation's Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to UNIX...
accused IBM of violating their copyright on UNIX by transferring code from UNIX to Linux. SCO claims ownership of the copyrights on UNIX and a lawsuit was filed against IBM. Red Hat has countersued and SCO has since filed other related lawsuits. At the same time as their lawsuit, SCO began selling Linux licenses to users who did not want to risk a possible complaint on the part of SCO. Since Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
also claims the copyrights to UNIX, it filed suit against SCO.
SCO has since filed for bankruptcy.
Trademark rights
In 1994 and 1995, several people from different countries attempted to register the name "Linux" as a trademark. Thereupon requests for royalty payments were issued to several Linux companies, a step with which many developers and users of Linux did not agree. Linus Torvalds clamped down on these companies with help from Linux InternationalLinux International
Linux International, also known simply as LI, is a worldwide, non-profit association of groups, corporations and others that work towards the promotion of growth of Linux and FOSS. It is headed by Jon "maddog" Hall....
and was granted the trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
to the name, which he transferred to Linux International. Protection of the trademark was later administered by a dedicated foundation, the non-profit Linux Mark Institute
Linux Mark Institute
The Linux Mark Institute is an organization which administers the "Linux" trademark on behalf of Linus Torvalds for computer software which includes the Linux kernel, computer hardware utilizing Linux-based software, and for services associated with the implementation and documentation of...
. In 2000, Linus Torvalds specified the basic rules for the assignment of the licenses. This means that anyone who offers a product or a service with the name Linux must possess a license for it, which can be obtained through a unique purchase.
In June 2005, a new controversy developed over the use of royalties generated from the use of the Linux trademark. The Linux Mark Institute, which represents Linus Torvalds' rights, announced a price increase from 500 to 5,000 dollars for the use of the name. This step was justified as being needed to cover the rising costs of trademark protection.
In response to this increase, the community became displeased, which is why Linus Torvalds made an announcement on 21 August 2005, in order to dissolve the misunderstandings. In an e-mail he described the current situation as well as the background in detail and also dealt with the question of who had to pay license costs:
The Linux Mark Institute has since begun to offer a free, perpetual worldwide sublicense.
Chronology
- 1983: Richard Stallman creates the GNU project with the goal of creating a free operating system.
- 1989: Richard Stallman writes the first version of the GNU General Public LicenseGNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. - 1991: The Linux kernel is publicly announced on 25 August by the 21 year old Finnish student Linus Benedict Torvalds.
- 1992: The Linux kernel is relicensed under the GNU GPL. The first so called “Linux distributions” are created.
- 1993: Over 100 developers work on the Linux kernel. With their assistance the kernel is adapted to the GNU environment, which creates a large spectrum of application types for Linux. The oldest currently existing Linux distribution, SlackwareSlackwareSlackware is a free and open source Linux-based operating system. It was one of the earliest operating systems to be built on top of the Linux kernel and is the oldest currently being maintained. Slackware was created by Patrick Volkerding of Slackware Linux, Inc. in 1993...
, is released for the first time. Later in the same year, the DebianDebianDebian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
project is established. Today it is the largest community distribution. - 1994: In March Torvalds judges all components of the kernel to be fully matured: he releases version 1.0 of Linux. The XFree86XFree86XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and is now available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the XFree86 License version 1.1. It is developed by the...
project contributes a graphic user interface (GUI). In this year the companies Red HatRed HatRed Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....
and SUSESUSE Linux distributionsSUSE Linux is a computer operating system. It is built on top of the open source Linux kernel and is distributed with system and application software from other open source projects. SUSE Linux is of German origin and mainly developed in Europe. The first version appeared in early 1994, making...
publish version 1.0 of their Linux distributions. - 1995: Linux is ported to the DEC AlphaDEC AlphaAlpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...
and to the Sun SPARC. Over the following years it is ported to an ever greater number of platforms. - 1996: Version 2.0 of the Linux kernel is released. The kernel can now serve several processors at the same time, and thereby becomes a serious alternative for many companies.
- 1998: Many major companies such as IBM, Compaq and Oracle announce their support for Linux. In addition a group of programmers begins developing the graphic user interface KDEKDEKDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
. - 1999: A group of developers begin work on the graphic environment GNOMEGNOMEGNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
, which should become a free replacement for KDE, which depended on the then proprietary Qt toolkitQt (toolkit)Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...
. During the year IBM announces an extensive project for the support of Linux. - 2004: The XFree86XFree86XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and is now available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the XFree86 License version 1.1. It is developed by the...
team splits up and joins with the existing X Window standards body to form the X.Org FoundationX.Org FoundationThe X.Org Foundation is the organization holding the stewardship for the development of the X Window System. It was founded on 22 January 2004....
, which results in a substantially faster development of the X Window ServerX.Org ServerX.Org Server refers to the X server release packages stewarded by the X.Org Foundation,which is hosted by freedesktop.org, and grants...
for Linux. - 2005: The project openSUSE begins a free distribution from Novell's community. Also the project OpenOffice.org introduces version 2.0 that now supports OASIS OpenDocument standards in October.
- 2006: Oracle releases its own distribution of Red Hat. Novell and Microsoft announce a cooperation for a better interoperability.
- 2007: Dell starts distributing laptops with UbuntuUbuntu (operating system)Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
pre-installed in them. - 2011: Version 3.0 of the Linux kernel is released.