How and why Linux has thrived after three decades in Kernelland

At OSS EU, LWN editor and long-time kernel developer Jonathan Corbet shared a long-term perspective on how and why Linux has thrived for a third of a century. Corbet's talk offered a rare, nearly unique, insight into the rise and rise of Linux over 30 years. There aren't that many developers who've been involved for so much of …

[VoiceOfTruth]

Licenses

>> It covers the importance of the GPL over other FOSS licenses

I call bullshit on this. On the desktop, X11 is based on MIT and BSD licenses, not GNU. Without a desktop Linux would be very limited indeed. The other licenses are arguably as important.

[heyrick]

Re: Licenses

I think the GPL or not GPL question really comes down to how political you want your licence to be. There are some who view the GPL as being too restrictive, in particular v3. It's worth noting that the Linux kernel has stuck with GPL v2 and is, therefore, technically incompatible with v3. But lots of hand waving is used to make that be a non-issue...

[Liam Proven]

Re: Licenses

Ne tirez pas sur la messager.

I'm not passionate either way. Visiting EuroBSDCon was very instructive. The BSD folks are all very happy with their licensing situation and seem to watch all the drama over in GPLandia with amusement.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Licenses

I agree 100%. I'm not anti GNU by any means. But I feel it that some people (not LP) try to elevate one licence over another, and it's just noise. If it is that important to them, let them give up software using other licences. They'll have a fun time with their hi-res terminals. Wayland is also MIT, before anyone looks it up. One could argue the spread of TCP/IP was due to BSD UNIX, when UCB made the code public domain.

[m4r35n357]

Re: Licenses

(restored withdrawn post)

The licence thing is so simple I can't believe it is still not 100% understood by everyone everywhere, BSD is more free than the GPL because it includes the freedom to fuck yourself and others over. GPL adds restrictions that prevents this. Horses for courses; I have used both for my code, and run software that uses both. Non-issue.

People are naturally free to have opinions about what licences they _prefer_, but do NOT get to tell specific devs what they "should" be using!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Licenses

You seem to assume that those using the BSD licence do so in ignorance of what it means. Either that you fail to comprehend their intentions.

[m4r35n357]

Re: Licenses

I made it pretty clear that I do NOT think that.

[bazza]

Re: Licenses

BSD is more free, but it doesn’t really let you fuck over the authors (your “others”?). They’re giving away free sweets, so thievery of sweets isn’t really possible, nor is it possible to claim that one had made the sweets oneself.

[Uplink]

Re: Licenses

The way I understand the GPL "freedom", is that it's not freedom for you, it's freedom for the software itself. The software cannot be chained and locked in a proprietary basement - not by you, not by anyone. They could just as well call it "emancipated software" to drive the point home.

The BSD and MIT people seem to say "yeah, whatever, if you lock it in your basement, you just make more work for yourselves, so good luck with that".

[skane2600]

Re: Licenses

First of all, you shouldn't anthropomorphize code. It cannot be free. The BSD and MIT licenses don't lock down anything. If you get a copy of the code, it exists in it's original form forever. If someone gets a copy and modifies it, it has zero impact on the original. It's ok if you prefer a license that requires the source code that is changed to be shared, but it would be better to avoid the misrepresentation. The GPL is really more about control than freedom.

[doublelayer]

Re: Licenses

The metaphor doesn't work. Code itself can't take actions. There's no such thing as locking code up, and to the extent that I can imagine such a thing, I can do it very easily with GPL software. I've made modifications to GPL software which you can't read for the simple reason that I never gave either the code or the binary to anyone else. That's as basemented as anything else could be. That happens all the time for businesses that run the stuff in house or, in the case of GPL2, in hardware products they sell. And exactly the same thing happens to them; modifications don't integrate well with their private ones and they often end up behind the times.

The freedoms involved are on people. Users, developers, etc have different rights and responsibilities. GPL is a more restrictive license in that it requires more from developers than something like MIT does, but those restrictions are designed to increase the quantity of software using that license. Each dev chooses what level of restrictions and freedoms they feel suits their concept of how they are happy to let others use their code with the restriction that, if they used someone else's, their set of choices may be reduced.

[Uplink]

Re: Licenses

The two replies I got so far made me realise that the basement metaphor is not quite right. I can't think of another word for "software slavery" right now (unless it's "cage"), but I have a real world example: Linksys WRT54G: https://lkml.org/lkml/2003/6/7/164

[Claude Yeller]

Re: Licenses

The license choice seems to affect the size of the development team.

GPLed projects generally start very small, but can grow to massive sizes, up to the largest known, as Linux shows. The X11 project is nowhere near a big in terms of number of developers.

MIT like licenses seem to be prone to fragmentation (BSDs) and proprietary capture (MACH kernel).

I can understand that it might be demotivating to work on a project that is made proprietary and locking you out from further development.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Licenses

>The X11 project is nowhere near a big in terms of number of developers.

Because X is largely a finished/legacy project at this point.

You could say the same about Emacs and that is about as GPL as GPL can be

[Dan 55]

Re: Licenses

That was addressed in the talk. He made the case that Linux kernel wouldn't have seen improvements in the network stack or other general improvements if it weren't for the GPL.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Licenses

I haven't heard or read the talk yet. But I don't see how improvements in network stacks have anything to do with licences.

[Dan 55]

Re: Licenses

Watch it and you'll find out.

[Gary Stewart]

Re: Licenses

So how do you voice truth when you don't know what you are voicing about? Asking to quell my curiosity.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Licenses

Well, let's put it this way. Do you think FreeBSD has a worse network stack than Linux (whichever version)? Windows TCP/IP outperformed Linux's back in the day, and this was admitted as such.

So I feel I can ask, does using GPL automatically make Linux have a better networking stack? What does the licence have to do with it?

[Dan 55]

Re: Licenses

If you'd put the video on in the background while doing something else or scrolled through the transcript to find it you'd know by now.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Licenses

From the tone of the report I would get a one-sided view.

[doublelayer]

Re: Licenses

Because, when someone wanted to use Linux, the network stack wasn't good enough, so they had to write their own to make those things work together, they had to release that code or break the license. Once they released the code, it could be included and built upon by everyone else. The first good implementation could be used by everyone rather than kept as a proprietary advantage. Similarly, Linux provided enough good implementations of other stuff that someone wanted to use it for networking equipment rather than build all those other parts from scratch. Both sides got something simpler which they were able to reuse, but if the license had been more or less restrictive, that might not have happened.

[bazza]

Re: Licenses

I think that applies to any OSS licensed code.

There’s nothing in GPL that makes one donate code back, even if you onwards distribute a binary. You simply have to distribute the code onwards if asked by the recipient of the binary.

People do distribute back because, mostly, they want to help out, not because of the license. This is why a myth has grown up that GPL makes one donate code back.

[doublelayer]

Re: Licenses

Your objections either make no sense or are simply incorrect.

"I think that applies to any OSS licensed code."

Incorrect. If, for example, something is released under the MIT license, I can add code to it, not release it to anybody, and be totally fine. It takes extra license terms to require that I release modifications under the same license or provide source.

"There’s nothing in GPL that makes one donate code back, even if you onwards distribute a binary."

You're drawing a distinction between "donate code back" and "release code" which does not exist and did not happen in this case. There is no requirement to upstream code, as in making sure it's included. There couldn't be; that would be infeasible if upstream doesn't want your code. That's also not what happened. The code that had been written was not released publicly until lawsuits were threatened, and when it was released, it was merely published, not added to the mainline kernel by its original devs. Someone else copied it and integrated it with modifications. The important part is that, once it was released at all, it was released under a license that allowed someone to merge it into code run by others and continue to maintain it. GPL requires that you release code if requested by someone with the binary, and it requires that you use license terms that let it be merged back. Not everything does.

[midgepad]

Re: Licenses

Makes .... causes

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Licenses

> People do distribute back because, mostly, they want to help out, not because of the license.

However those people would in the usual course of events be prohibited from releasing "our" code by manglement for a wide variety of "reasons"

GPL's "We are legally obliged to" gives the developers, and everyone up the corporate stack, cover to do the right thing, or do the thing they actually would like to do, or do the "safest" thing, which are now congruent.

It's quite a subtle emergent effect, certainly more subtle that the viral/cancerous infection idea that it set out to bludgeon business with.

[JamesTGrant]

Re: Licenses

I haven’t taken any classes and I’m rubbish at brick laying.

[bazza]

Re: Licenses

Not sure that putting the network stack in the kernel was a good idea…

[m4r35n357]

Re: Licenses

I moved my reply to here but can't see it any more, something weird in el reg forums . . . .

[Dan 55]

Re: Licenses

They appear to have something like a load balancer which takes time to propagate fully, if you refresh a few times it comes back (unless you've been modded of course).

[Doctor Syntax]

I think it wasn't the lawsuit itself that helped Linux, it was the fact that it was the only thing SCO tried. Under the previous owners SCO had become a mature server. A lot of small businesses ran on it. As a desktop OS it was far, far too expensive. It's true that for a short while there was a developer offer which was free and came with the usual Unix developer tools but I don't think it was offered for long and, although there was no mechanism to restrict it, it was only supposed to have a short licence period.

If SCO had set out to attract the student/enthusiast/developer population by making it affordable they'd have beaten Linux as it then was on quality. It's even possible that a more competitive price might have kept Microsoft out of the server market. No wonder Microsoft egged them on in a fight with an opponent they couldn't beat; it was a diversion that allowed MS to take over as the small business server OS.

[m4r35n357]

They already HAD a consumer distro - Caldera Linux, which was highly regarded at the time (particularly their installer). Caldera then BOUGHT out the Santa Cruz Operation, obliterated their good name, and turned traitor in the grossest way possible.

Darl McBride was a direct precursor to the current generation of entitled psychopath billionaires, but fortunately he never made it. ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Caldera then BOUGHT out the Santa Cruz Operation"

Not quite.

Santa Cruz Operation (aka SCO) sold the Unix side of their business to Caldera and then renamed themselves Tarantella (to focus on that software) and then Caldera renamed themselves The SCO Group.

[m4r35n357]

Yep, correct, forgot about Tarantella.

[m4r35n357]

Oops, apologies for multiple postings, but it is worth recording here that M$ very publicly bought $50 milllions worth of "licences" from "SCO" to finance their litigation against Linux.

[Doctor Syntax]

Which kept SCO busy while MS ate the small server market.

[DS999]

I think the lawsuit helped

Because SCO gave it their everything and couldn't touch Linux, and that gave the business world confidence that investing in Linux related stuff wasn't a legal risk.

[frankvw]

It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

You know what - that might actually be one of the main reasons why Linux has never made much impact (yet) on the corporate desktop.

Consider all the commercially successful Big Tech outfits. They all had/have a key figure, a face that would look good on stage during keynote speeches. Novell had Ray Noorda. MICROS~1 had Bill Gates. Oracle has Larry Ellison. Et cetera ad nauseam.

Linux is the OS of the Gods (hence the icon) but lacks a charismatic face to present it as a commercial entity in a manner engaging to boardroom denizens. Just like any other mainstream IT product it's actually made and maintained by hordes of faceless geeks, but without a recognizable CEO that C-suite members can relate to it will remain the exclusive province of the proverbial geek.

And if you think that good looks and charisma don't matter all that much, look no further than presidential elections that are won and lost on how well a candidate looks on TV.

[heyrick]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

Probably just as well. The C-Suite types absolutely would NOT understand the ethos underpinning the whole thing. Best let them think it's some weird hacker thing so they can muddle on with Microsoft...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

Microsoft is very good at stuff that Linux doesn't do well but Microsoft's old customers wanted.

You have 10,000 desktop PCs in a company and you want to make sure that logins work and policies are enforced across all of them - still tricky to do simply on Linux

Microsoft might have won on the desktop, it's just that the desktop is becoming irrlevent, and Linux has won everywhere that still matters

[AnAnonymousCanuck]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

> You have 10,000 desktop PCs in a company and you want to make sure that logins work and policies are enforced across all of them - still tricky to do simply on Linux

Really? Maybe you should try hiring someone or two who have a clue.

YMMV

AAC

[Snake]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

With respect, I keep saying on this forum that, if you have 10,000 desktop PC's running in a company, said company is doing much more than what is covered in common Linux-compatible desktop productivity applications - said company is most likely using much more than email, Office suites and internet. It is much more reasonable to assume that they have specific industry requirements and are using job-specific software to accomplish it (as, for example, I do). This is the *real* problem with Linux on desktop, compatibility with needed desktop software; the OS's stability is irrelevant if you can't use it to get the job you needed done, done.

[frankvw]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

" This is the *real* problem with Linux on desktop, compatibility with needed desktop software"

Which is exactly the sort of problem that would have been significantly mitigated if Linux had had a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates to act as a corporate talking head to engage the C-suite. The problem with mainstream applications (from Autocad and Photoshop to Salesforce^* and Peoplesoft, and everything in between and beyond those) is that their respective vendors never believed Linux would offer them a market, whereas it was made clear to them that MS had a strategy to do so.

^* Salesforce does have a certain amount of Linux support these days, but it's been added as an afterthought, and (to be kind) elegant it's not.

[Snake]

Re: significant mitigation

Come on, be realistic: to what benefit of those you mentioned would getting behind Linux accomplish??

See? FOSS people are living in a pipe dream. "If only the major companies, making billions for their shareholders by selling commercial products, got behind FREE SOFTWARE!" Really?? RedHat has enough problems monetizing Linux but you want Apple, Microsoft, Oracle et al to say, "Besides our paid-for products, let's all consider the stuff that's free!"??

smh. We can't even get fair compensation for the work put in by FOSS developers *now*. You think that, if they managed to monitize and back Linux, that it would be any better? Yeah, I've got a bridge to sell you over the Thames if you want to believe that

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: significant mitigation

Is it the one at Hammersmith? I gather it's not used that much these days.

[frankvw]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

"The C-Suite types absolutely would NOT understand the ethos underpinning the whole thing."

That's exactly my point. If Linux had had a Bill Gates, Ray Noorda, Larry Ellison or what have you - a corporate talking head to talk boardroom talk to other corporate talking head in a manner that they respond to, who knows how big Linux would have been today. At the very least we'd seen much better hardware support for Linux and we'd have Linux versions of mainstream applications.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

And it would have been a monster created in their image that raided corporate and home user pockets alike.

Its merit is that it isn't the product of people like them.

[Dan 55]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

And it would have been a monster created in their image that raided corporate and home user pockets^Wdata alike.

Android?

[Ken Hagan]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

Android is not Linux in any meaningful way. Most of the Android layer appears to have set itself the goal of preventing as much basic Linux freedom as possible, to produce a platform that can be controlled and monetised.

Which is what Google wanted and that's fine for them, but they could have used (and still could switch to) any other OS ... if such a thing existed.

[doublelayer]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

The promoters you're referring to weren't corporate sales. Bill Gates probably did do that at some point, but when he was selling Windows 95 to people, he wasn't having board room talk. He made some speeches for large audiences, and I don't actually think they were very charismatic. That is not why Windows was adopted in offices and Linux wasn't. If you need people who can do corporate sales, Red Hat had plenty and they now have even more because IBM does mostly that, Canonical can find some, and I'm sure some Linux kernel people could manage it if they wanted to which they don't. A single figurehead who is good at speaking isn't the same thing. People didn't buy Oracle's database software because Ellison made a nice speech.

[JulieM]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

We don't want "Linux versions of mainstream applications", if that is going to mean proprietary software with restrictive licensing terms.

If we can't Enjoy the use of it, Study how it works, Share it with our neighbours and Adapt it to our individual needs, then it's no good.

I have never seen anyone purchase proprietary software and not end up eventually regretting it, for reasons which would not apply if they only had the Source Code and Modification Rights.

[Dan 55]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

Oh come on, surely you want more games than Tux Racer.

[JulieM]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

Well, yes; and there are a great many more Open Source games than Tux Racer.

Also, I can write my own games.

[doublelayer]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

You may not, but there are plenty of people who do. No amount of pretending that what you want and what they want must necessarily be the same will change that. There are people who are willing to purchase proprietary software if they don't have an open source alternative, even though they won't have the right to modify and distribute. There are even people who will choose to purchase proprietary software instead of using the open source variant, sometimes for justifiable reasons (it has features we need, the open source one doesn't, and I'd rather pay for what I need now than try to write it in myself) and sometimes for worse ones (something vague about support or security).

If you want Linux to take over in corporate environments, you have to deal with the fact that many such people work in them. Expecting to change every business from running proprietary applications atop Windows to only ever using open source is going to be much harder unless you're making the open source software whenever it doesn't already exist. I've done that to a few small things before, but I'm not signing up to do it for everybody.

[DS999]

Linus doesn't represent a company

It doesn't matter if he was the most captivating public speaker ever, he doesn't have anything to "sell". If he'd attached himself to Red Hat, for example, that would be different then he could maybe have become that figure if he had also been a great public speaker.

The example of Gates is funny though, he's not exactly a great public speaker today though he's become better over the years with much practice. He was terrible 30-40 years ago when Microsoft started taking the corporate world by storm. If Microsoft had to rely on his magnetic personality and public speaking for their success they'd be a footnote in computing history today.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: It's quite well known that Linus Torvalds himself doesn't enjoy public speaking.

Nonsense!

I can tell you what happened!

DOS -> Lotus 123 & WordStart/WordPerfect

Windows 3.1 -> Lotus 123, Wordstar/WordPerfect, Microsoft Works

Windows 95 -> Microsoft Office & still Lotus 123, WordStar/WordPerfect (I used to support law firms who refused to get off of WordPerfect text version for YEARS After MS Word came out)

Then all the enterprise software that came out in Windows, Great Planes (not MS Dynamics), JD Edwards, etc., and all the industry vertical software!

All throughout this time there wasn't an option for Linux/Unix, there wasn't a good desktop, no real replacement for Office, WordPerfect, WordStart, Lotus.

Then came MS Exchange and again, there was no competitor on the Linux side! Novell had a nice offering but that's not Linux. As did Lotus, but that was Windows.

Then came the Microsoft propaganda, freeware is BAD! Anything you are not paying for will not be supported, etc., etc.

By this time, it was done!

I love Linux, (though I'm a bit pissed with kernel 6.16 being a holy bug filled mess!) but for the corporate desktop it is too stratified! There are too many disparate players that don't work towards the same goal, (while many others do). Libre Office, while a nice product just cannot compete with Office, why? Because the team that maintains it are perennially "stuck on stupid"! Common features available in Excel for years like tables they refuse to support for some unknown philosophical reasons, Writer IMO is just annoying to work in if you are used to Word. There is WPS, I've tried it, it is a wonderful product, probably the most Excel compatible Linux product I've used, their Word equivalent is also outstanding, BUT, it is a Chinese product and in this current climate, THAT is not going to get anywhere near the corporate desktop!

Unless SOME company is going to build a Linux distribution with a solid desktop (maybe a version of KDE as it is the most polished), with a set of MS Office compatible (truly compatible, not the half-assed Libre compatible) application, including a feature compliant Outlook replacement, charge a nominal license fee for support, offer quality support AND TRAINING FOR IT STAFF, You can forget ever having Linux take over the corporate desktop, EVER! Support is the biggest issue, Help Desk staff DO NOT know Linux, most of them WILL NOT LEARN! They know Windows because they've used it their whole lives, it's the same for the business staff!

[DarkwavePunk]

Linux

UNIX was my gateway drug, but that was at university and mostly SunOS and Xenix. Then came mid 1994, Slackware, a 14.4k modem, and a lot of floppy disks. Been using Linux ever since. It has come a long way as a kernel. Can't remember the last time I compiled a kernel though. Jeff Geerling is going to hunt me down, tut, and be really nice now :)

[William Towle]

+1 "worth a watch"

I was interested to see the kernel line count graph (shown in the first two minutes) and how there has been continuous growth since inception despite the four major events that Jonathan chose to add.

Having recently parted ways with a company let down by their OEM over what appeared to be the pandemic's impact it was comforting to see kernel development having carried on unhindered.

[Blackjack]

The price and the GNU license has always been a factor.

Although I am a tad worried about what will happen once certain benevolent Dictator For Life is no longer in the land of the living.

[keithpeter]

Would hope the BDFL in question has a retirement plan and a pension fund, so BDFC I suppose with 'C' for career.

[Joe Gurman]

"Another dozen years later, it was COVID-19, and yet kernel 5.6 came out like normal."

Even Mr. Torvalds realized that having all the developers cooped up at home was probably the ideal dev environment.

https://xkcd.com/2276

[steelpillow]

Lest we forget

Let us pause for a moment to remember the true nemesis of McBride. Her name was Pamela Jones, PJ to her friends, and she was a nothing-much junior lawyer somewhere or other. She started a website called Groklaw, where she tracked legal tiffs in the Open Source world. Natch, she took on SCO v IBM and it soon came to dominate her life. Groklaw became the rallying point for all likeminded warriors and played a pivotal role in informing the defence. Many and nasty were the attacks launched upon her site and her person, however she was smart and utterly obsessive about her privacy, and none ever found its mark. SCO died, but its acolytes kept pumping Virgin Blood dollars into its veins and it rose up again and again. PJ kept going. Then the Internet changed. Not-spyware-honest became so prevalent that privacy had become impossible against a determined attacker. And she had plenty of those. She no longer felt safe on the streets, called it a day and vanished. But the deed was done. Eventually the last mad puppeteer ran out of the last drop of virgin blood, and it was all over. RIP SCO v IBM, sadly also RIP Groklaw. Without PJ, the course of Free, Libre and Open Source Software might have run very differently. The link above is to a page announcing the demise of SCO. If you go there today, someone else has resurrected a shadow of what it once was.

PJ, wherever you are, you are still loved by millions around the globe.

[dmesg]

Re: Lest we forget

Amen. I learned a lot about the intersection of law, corporate maneuvering, and software from Growlaw. It was my required daily reading for the whole of its existence. PJ, wherever you may be, I hope you are doing well. If there is ever a Museum of Linux, I hope they put that red dress on special display.

[An_Old_Dog]

Development Models

Look at the GNU project, the X Consortium, the BSDs, all these projects were run in a very centralized sort of way, with a small group of people who could really work with the software and make decisions and who would every now and then deign to toss out a release that everybody else could use.

Before Unix went "commercial" (big product, big docs, big licensing, big price), it was written, re-written, and added-to by whomever within Bell Labs wanted to, and it was very much a "eating your own dogfood" type project.

[Nameless Dread]

'... if you think that good looks and charisma don't matter all that much, look no further than presidential elections that are won and lost on how well a candidate looks on TV.'

'good looks and charisma' ? I've seen a certain orange person in action and, frankly, it was embarrassing.

[Blerpo]

You shoulda seen the other guy..

[Uplink]

There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Free

Linux succeeded where others had failed because it was free, both in beer and speech. It was and isn't the best operating system you can conjure, but it suffices for the majority of tasks or can be modified so that it does.

I'd rather have seen MINIX or MMURTL succeed, but both of these were hampered by licensing issues. And by the time Tanenbaum corrected his ill-fated decision it was too late.

[Telman]

Only the OS being open source matters