In 1991, while studying computer science at University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became the Linux kernel. 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. The GNU C Compiler is still the main choice for compiling Linux today, but can be built with other compilers, such as the Intel C Compiler.
As Torvalds wrote in his book Just for Fun, he eventually ended up writing an operating system kernel. On 25 August 1991, he (at age 21) 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 ([email protected])
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 According to Torvalds, Linux began to gain importance in 1992 after the X Window System was ported to Linux by Orest Zborowski, which allowed Linux to support a GUI for the first time.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/
Ballmer: ‘Linux is a cancer’ Contaminates all other software with Hippie GPL rubbish
Microsoft CEO and incontinent over-stater of facts Steve Ballmer said that “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches,” during a commercial spot masquerading as a interview with the Chicago Sun-Times on June 1, 2001.
Ballmer was trying to articulate his concern, whether real or imagined, that limited recourse to the GNU GPL requires that all software be made open source.
“The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source,” Ballmer explained to an excessively credulous, un-named Sun-Times reporter who, predictably, neglected to question this bold assertion.
Perhaps Ballmer was thinking of this: “If identifiable sections of [a companion] work are not derived from the [open-source] Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.”
The passage is hopelessly ill written. What on earth, we must wonder, can the authors mean by a companion work which can be ‘reasonably considered’ to be separate? Do they mean it should have been developed independently? Do they mean it should function independently? Do they mean both?
What if a secondary work were developed separately, and function separately, but remain inextricably integrated with the first, the way Internet Explorer is with Windows? Is that ‘reasonably considered’ to be a separate work?
What’s ‘reasonable’ here, anyway? And ‘considered’ by whom? The average adult? The average programmer? It’s vague, all right; we’ll give old Steve that much.
But one thing we can depend on is that it definitely doesn’t mean what Ballmer slickly tries to imply: that once you issue anything under the GPL, every other piece of software you have for sale is suddenly affected by it.
And yet this is the shaky basis on which Ballmer dismisses open source as anathema to all commercial software companies. It can’t be used at all, he reasons, because even a tiny germ of it, like a metastasizing cancer, contaminates the entire body. Thus Microsoft ‘has a problem’ with government funding of open-source.
“Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody,” he says patriotically. But “open source is not available to commercial companies,” and should therefore be regarded as a violation of the public trust.
Ballmer touches on a few other items, including Microsoft’s new product activation and licensing schemes, which, it is hoped, will pave the way for a thriving software rental business and its subsequent endless revenue stream.
“Our goal is to try to educate people on what it means to protect intellectual property and pay for it properly” (read ‘eternally’), Ballmer says.
If by ‘educate’ he means punish with higher costs those who fail to appreciate the wisdom of volume software leases, and inconvenience Win-XP users who like to re-format on a regular basis with a limit of two clean installs, then perhaps he might have chosen different wording.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ballmer-i-may-have-called-linux-a-cancer-but-now-i-love-it/
Ballmer: I may have called Linux a cancer but now I love it Former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer once considered Linux users a bunch of communist thieves and saw open source itself as a cancer on Microsoft’s intellectual property. But no more.
With Azure moving up the food chain in Redmond, Microsoft has since 2012 softened its stance on open-source software, capped off by this week’s move to port SQL Server to Linux.
Eleven years before that, shortly after taking the helm at Microsoft, Ballmer said, “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”
The other c-word he used for Linux was communism, accusing the Linux community of diluting Microsoft’s R&D spend by infringing on its intellectual property.
Reuters reports that Ballmer still stands by his cancer analogy as right for the time. Speaking at an event earlier this week, he said going to war with open source “made a ton of money” that still contributes to Microsoft’s revenue. But he said he now considers that the threat from Linux is over.
Ballmer said he “loved” the SQL for Linux announcement and had emailed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to congratulate him on the move.
Yet, as Reuters points out, Microsoft’s shares lost 40 percent of their value during Ballmer’s 14-year tenure. They’ve risen 50 percent under current chief Nadella, who recently went public on Microsoft’s love for Linux.
Still, it would be wrong to believe the open-sourcing of Microsoft only started with Nadella. A case in point is the open-sourcing of .Net, which began three years before Nadella’s appointment.
Ballmer said the change in the market’s perception of Microsoft is in part the result of having a new executive at the helm.
Perhaps his new-found peace with Linux is linked to yoga, a practice he said he has taken up after leaving Microsoft in 2014.
He also said he and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates “have gone our own paths”.
Em 1991, Linus Torvalds precisava de um sistema operacional para usar com seu PC 386. Na época, sistemas Unix caríssimos, e voltados para uso comercial. O projeto do Linux surgiu como um hobby, sem grandes expectativas, buscando portar para a plataforma todos os recursos típicos de uma máquina Unix.
Em uma mensagem para a lista o Minix em, Linus anunciou sua criação:
Oi para todos que estão usando o Minix -
Estou criando um sistema operacional livre (apenas um hobby, nada profissional como o gnu) para clones de 386(486). Isso está no forno desde abril, e começando a ficar pronto. Eu gostaria de qualquer feedback sobre o que as pessoas gostam/não gosta no Minix, pois este SO parece um pouco com ele (mesmo layout físico do sistema de arquivos (devido a razões práticas) bem como outras coisa).
Eu portei o bash(1.08) e o gcc(1.40), e tudo parece estar funcionando. Isso implica que chegarei a algo prático nos próximos meses, e que eu gostaria de saber que funcionalidades vocês desejam. Sugestões são bem vindas, mas eu não prometo implementa-las :-)
Linus ([email protected])
PS. Sim - é livre que qualquer código Minix, e tem multi-threaded fs. NÃO é portável (usa 386 para alternação de tarefas etc) e provavelmente nunca irá suporar nada além de discos rígidos AT, pois é só o que tenho :-()