HISTORY OF LINUX

History

Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.

In 1991, Linus Torvalds began to work on the Linux kernel while he was attending the University of Helsinki. Torvalds originally intended Linux to be a non-commercial replacement for Minix, an educational operating system developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. Linux was dependent on the Minix userspace at first.

Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project for a free operating system.

The GNU Project, with the goal of creating a UNIX-like, POSIX-compatible operating system composed entirely of free software, had begun development in 1984, and a year later Richard Stallman had created the Free Software Foundation and wrote the first draft of the GNU General Public License (GPLv1). By the early 1990s, the project had produced or collected many necessary operating system components, including libraries, compilers, text editors, and a Unix shell, and the upper level could be supplied by the X Window System, but development of the lower level, which consisted of a kernel, device drivers and daemons had stalled and was incomplete.

The GPL allowed GNU code to be used in other projects, so long as they too were released under the GPL. In order to allow GNU code to be integrated with Linux, Torvalds changed his original license (which prohibited commercial redistribution) to the GPLv2. Linux and GNU developers worked to integrate GNU components with Linux. Thus Linux became a complete, fully functional free operating system.

Naming

In 1992, Torvalds explained how he pronounces the word Linux:

“	'li' is pronounced with a short [ee] sound: compare prInt, mInImal etc. 'nux' is also short, non-diphtong, like in pUt. It's partly due to minix: linux was just my working name for the thing, and as I wrote it to replace minix on my system, the result is what it is... linus' minix became linux.	„

Linux and the GNU project

The Free Software Foundation views Linux distributions which use GNU software as "variants" of the GNU system, and they ask that such operating systems be referred to as GNU/Linux or a Linux-based GNU system. However, the media and population at large refers to this family of operating systems simply as Linux. While some distributors make a point of using the aggregate form, most notably Debian with the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, its use outside of the enthusiast community is limited. The distinction between the Linux kernel and distributions based on it plus the GNU system is a source of confusion to many newcomers, and the naming remains controversial.

Copyright, licensing and the Linux trademark

The Linux kernel and most GNU software are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2. The GPL requires that all distributed source code modifications and derived works also be licensed under the GPL, and is sometimes referred to as a "share and share-alike", "copyleft", or, pejoratively, a viral license. In 1997, Linus Torvalds stated, "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." Other software may use other licenses; many libraries use the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a more permissive variant of the GPL, and the X Window System uses the MIT License. After more than ten years, the Free Software Foundation announced that they would be upgrading the GPL to version 3, citing increasing concerns with software patents and digital rights management (DRM).In particular, DRM is appearing in systems running copyleft software, a phenomenon dubbed "tivoization" after digital video recorder maker Tivo's use of DRM in their Linux-based appliances. Linus Torvalds has publicly stated on the Linux Kernel Mailing List that, based on the drafts of the license, he would not move the Linux kernel to GPL v.3, specifically citing the DRM provisions.

In March 2003, the SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM, claiming that IBM had contributed parts of SCO's copyrighted code to the Linux kernel, violating IBM's license to use Unix. Also, SCO sent letters to several companies warning that their use of Linux without a license from SCO may be actionable, and claimed in the press that they would be suing individual Linux users. Per the Utah District Court ruling on July 3, 2006; 182 out of 294 items of evidence provided by SCO against IBM in discovery were dismissed.

See also: SCO-Linux controversies

In 2004, Ken Brown, president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, published Samizdat, a highly controversial book which, among other criticism of open source software, denied Torvalds' authorship of the Linux kernel (attributing it to Tanenbaum, instead). This was rebutted by Tanenbaum himself.

In the United States, the name Linux is a trademark registered to Linus Torvalds. Initially, nobody registered it, but on August 15, 1994, William R. Della Croce, Jr. filed for the trademark Linux, and then demanded royalties from Linux distributors. In 1996, Torvalds and some affected organizations sued to have the trademark assigned to Torvalds, and in 1997 the case was settled. The licensing of the trademark has since been handled by the Linux Mark Institute. Torvalds has stated that he only trademarked the name to prevent someone else from using it, but was bound in 2005 by United States trademark law to take active measures to enforce the trademark. As a result, the LMI sent out a number of letters to distribution vendors requesting that a fee be paid for the use of the name, and a number of companies have complied