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The 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 current state of about 285 megabytes of source under the GNU General Public License.

Early history

Pre-history

In 1983, Richard Stallman started the GNU project with the goal of creating a free UNIX-like, POSIX-compatible operating system. As part of this work, he wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL). By the early 1990s there was almost enough available to create a full operating system. However, the GNU kernel, called Hurd had failed to attract enough development momentum.

Another free operating system project in the 1980s was the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). This was developed by UC, Berkeley from the 6th edition of Unix from AT&T. Since AT&T Unix code was contained in BSD, AT&T filed a lawsuit in the early 1990s against the University of Berkeley, which strongly limited the development of BSD and greatly slowed development.

Thus the early 1990s produced no complete, free system. This left a critical niche open that Linux would fill.

Birth of Linux

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 a 80386 processor. This is still among the standard today, optimally. The operating system he used during development was Minix, and the initial compiler was the GNU C compiler, which is still the main choice for compiling Linux today (although Linux will compile under 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.":

Hello everybody out there using minix -
 

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
 

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
 

Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
 

PS. Yes – it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

— Linus Torvalds

The name

Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention Freax, a portmanteau of "freak," "free," and "x," an allusion to Unix. During the start of his work on the system, he stored the files under the name "Freax" for about a half year. Torvalds had already considered the name "Linux," but initially dismissed it as too egotistical.

In order to give other people the ability to cooperate in the system or to suggest improvements, the files were placed on the ftp server (ftp.funet.fi) of the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvald's coworker at the HUT who was responsible for the servers at the time, did not agree with the name Freax, preferring the name Linux. He simply named the files placed on the server "Linux" without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux": "After many arguments, he finally admitted that Linux was simply the better name. In the source code of version 0.01 of Linux, the name 'Freax' was still used in the makefile. Only later was the name Linux used. Thus the name actually not planned at all became generally accepted world-wide."

Linux under the GNU GPL

Torvalds first published Linux under its own license, which was almost a shared source licence and which had a restriction on commercial activity. In 1992, he suggested to switch to the GNU General Public License. He first announced this change in the release notes of version 0.12. In the middle of December 1992 he published version 0.99 using the GNU GPL.

Later, Torvalds said in an interview, "making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.”.

GNU/Linux

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 Debian 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. While the GNU and Debian projects accepted the name, most developers and other Linux distributors rejected it.

Official mascot

Torvalds announced in 1996 that there would be a mascot for Linux, a penguin, and his desired appearance for the penguin is discussed in his biography Just For Fun: "However Linus did not want an x-arbitrary penguin. Its penguin should look lucky, so as if it would have enjoyed degrees measure beer and would have had the best sex of its life."(Lit.: Torvalds, P. 151) 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's UniX.

New development

Kernel

There are many other well-known maintainers for the Linux kernel beside Torvalds such as Alan Cox 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.

The success of Linux in many areas of application is mostly due to the lack of licensing costs and the characteristics of free software concerning stability, security, expandability and maintenance of leading back.

Community

The largest part of the work on Linux is performed by the Community, the programmers 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, 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.

Open Source Development Lab

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 he transferred to Google, which runs on the Linux kernel. Torvalds works full time on behalf the OSDL, developing the Linux Kernels. The noncommercial mechanism of several major companies is financed as Red Hat, Novell, Mitsubishi, Intel, IBM, Dell and HP.

Companies

Meanwhile a set of companies make money with 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 first of all on their own servers, and Red Hat, which maintains its own distribution. Likewise Trolltech supports Linux by the development and GPL licensing of Qt, which makes the development of KDE possible, and by the employment of some X and KDE developers.

Controversy over Linux

Linux has been surrounded by controversy repeatedly since its inception.

Andrew Tanenbaum

In 1992 Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 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", starting a famous debate about the structure of the then-recent Linux kernel. His most important criticisms were:

• The design of the kernel was monolithic and thus old-fashioned.
• The lack of portability, due to the use of exclusive features of the Intel 386 processor, was poor design in Tanenbaum's eyes. "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."
• The methods of open distribution and development of the software lacked strict control of the source code by any individual person.
• The operating system installed a set of features which were useless from Tanenbaum's point of view. (he judged the file system, one that permitted parallel access from several programs, as a redundant "performance chop").

Tanenbaum's prediction that Linux would become outdated within a few years and replaced by GNU Hurd (which he considered to be more modern) was incorrect. Linux has been ported to all of the 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.

SCO

In March 2003 the SCO Group 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 do 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.

Trademark of the name

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Trademark rights

In 1994 and 1995 several people in 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 International and was granted the trademark Linux, 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 attained 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 smooth the waves and 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:

And let’s repeat: somebody who doesn’t want to _protect_ that name would never do this. You can call anything "MyLinux", but the downside is that you may have somebody else who _did_ protect himself come along and send you a cease-and-desist letter. Or, if the name ends up showing up in a trademark search that LMI needs to do every once in a while just to protect the trademark (another legal requirement for trademarks), LMI itself might have to send you a cease-and-desist-or-sublicense it letter.
 

At which point you either rename it to something else, or you sublicense it. See? It’s all about whether _you_ need the protection or not, not about whether LMI wants the money or not.
 

Finally, just to make it clear: not only do I not get a cent of the trademark money, but even LMI (who actually administers the mark) has so far historically always lost money on it. That’s not a way to sustain a trademark, so they’re trying to at least become self-sufficient, but so far I can tell that lawyers fees to _give_ that protection that commercial companies want have been higher than the license fees. Even pro bono lawyers charge for the time of their costs and paralegals etc.

— Linus Torvalds

Chronology

• 1991: The Linux Kernel is publicly announced on 25 August by the 21 year old Finnish student Linus Benedict Torvalds. On 17 September the first public version appears on an ftp server. Some developers are interested in the project and contribute improvements and extensions.
• 1992: The Linux Kernel is relicensed under the GNU GPL. The first Linux distributions are created.
• 1994: In March of this year, Torvalds judges all components of the kernel to be fully matured: he releases version 1.0 of Linux. This version of the kernel is, for the first time, networkable. The XFree86 project contributes a graphic user interface (GUI). In this year the companies Red Hat and SUSE publish version 1.0 of their Linux distributions.
• 1995: In March the next stable branch of Linux appears, the 1.2 series. Later in the year Linux is ported to the DEC 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 kernel is released. The kernel can now serve several processors at the same time, and thereby becomes a serious alternative for many companies.
• 1999: The 2.2 series appears in January with improved network code and improved SMP support.
• 2001: The 2.4 series is released in January. The Kernel now supports up to 64 GB of RAM, 64-bit datasystems, USB and a journaling filesystem.
• 2002: In September the Slapper-worm is the first Linux worm.
• 2003: At the end of the year the 2.6 kernel is released, after which Linus Torvalds goes to work for the OSDL. Linux becomes used more widely on embedded systems.

See also

• History of free software

References

1. ^ Just for Fun,Linus Torvalds and David Diamond, 2001
2. Torvalds, Linus: What would you like to see most in minix? Usenet group comp.os.minix, August 25, 1991.
3. Torvalds, Linus (1992-01-05). "RELEASE NOTES FOR LINUX v0.12". Linux Kernel Archives. Retrieved 2007-07-23. The Linux copyright will change: I've had a couple of requests to make it compatible with the GNU copyleft, removing the "you may not distribute it for money" condition. I agree. I propose that the copyright be changed so that it confirms to GNU - pending approval of the persons who have helped write code. I assume this is going to be no problem for anybody: If you have grievances ("I wrote that code assuming the copyright would stay the same") mail me. Otherwise The GNU copyleft takes effect as of the first of February. If you do not know the gist of the GNU copyright - read it.
4. z-archive of Linux version 0.99, kernel.org, December 1992
5. Hiroo Yamagata: The Pragmatist of Free Software Linus Torvalds Interview, 05.08.1997
6. http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
7. Andrew Tanenbaum, Linus Torvalds and others: Linux is obsolete Usenet post, 29.01.1992
8. Linus Torvalds: Linus trademarks Linux?!! from the linux-Kernel mailing list, 21.08.2005

External links

• Google's timeline

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• Linux kernel
• History of software
• Free software culture and documents