Open Source Computing

Week 7



Linux history

What made Linux such a successful open-source project? Why did Linux beat BSD?
The email from Linus Torvalds to Mauro Carvalho illustrates two things:
  1. Torvalds' somewhat abusive style
  2. Torvalds' firm no-regression policy: user code that used to work should never be broken by a kernel update.

How do these factors play out in the success of Linux?

A third factor is Torvalds' policy on contributions: all are welcome, but they start out as non-mainline extensions, patches or modules.

386BSD

Wednesday: 386BSD