Robert M. Love (born c. 1981) is an American author, speaker, Google engineer, and open source software developer .
70-580: Love is best known for his contributions to the Linux kernel , with notable work including the preemptive kernel, process scheduler , kernel event layer, virtual memory subsystem, and inotify . At Google, he was a member of the Android team and helped launch the first version of the platform. Love is also active in the GNOME community, working on NetworkManager , GNOME Volume Manager , Project Utopia and Beagle . Love
140-576: A free replacement for Unix . Since the late 1990s, it has been included in many operating system distributions , many of which are called Linux . One such Linux kernel operating system is Android which is used in many mobile and embedded devices. Most of the kernel code is written in C as supported by the GNU compiler collection (GCC) which has extensions beyond standard C. The code also contains assembly code for architecture-specific logic such as optimizing memory use and task execution. The kernel has
210-486: A modular design such that modules can be integrated as software components – including dynamically loaded. The kernel is monolithic in an architectural sense since the entire OS runs in kernel space . Linux is provided under the GNU General Public License version 2 , although it contains files under other compatible licenses . In April 1991, Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old computer science student at
280-451: A version control system thus far, in 2002, Linux developers adopted BitKeeper , which was made freely available to them even though it was not free software . In 2005, because of efforts to reverse-engineer it, the company which owned the software revoked its support of the Linux community. In response, Torvalds and others wrote Git . The new system was written within weeks, and in two months
350-450: A GNU layer on top (i.e. Linux with GNU), because the kernel can operate a machine without GNU, is a matter of ongoing debate. The FSF maintains that an operating system built using the Linux kernel and GNU tools and utilities should be considered a variant of GNU , and promotes the term GNU/Linux for such systems (leading to the GNU/Linux naming controversy ). This view is not exclusive to
420-568: A Linux Kernel Code of Conflict was introduced on 8 March 2015. It was replaced on 16 September 2018 by a new Code of Conduct based on the Contributor Covenant . This coincided with a public apology by Torvalds and a brief break from kernel development. On 30 November 2018, complying with the Code of Conduct , Jarkko Sakkinen of Intel sent out patches replacing instances of "fuck" appearing in source code comments with suitable versions focused on
490-441: A bit in that more features were made available throughout the series, including support for Bluetooth , Logical Volume Manager (LVM) version 1, RAID support, InterMezzo and ext3 file systems. Version 2.6.0 was released on 17 December 2003. The development for 2.6. x changed further towards including new features throughout the series. Among the changes that have been made in the 2.6 series are: integration of μClinux into
560-530: A book on understanding and developing code for the Linux kernel. The book is widely regarded as approachable and well written and has been translated into several languages. All three editions are published by imprints of Pearson Education . He also wrote Linux System Programming , now in its second edition, subtitled Talking Directly to the Kernel and C Library , and published by O'Reilly Media . This work documents Linux's system call and C library API . Love
630-543: A multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable [ sic ] (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. On 17 September 1991, Torvalds prepared version 0.01 of Linux and put on the "ftp.funet.fi" – FTP server of the Finnish University and Research Network ( FUNET ). It was not even executable since its code still needed Minix to compile and test it. On 5 October 1991, Torvalds announced
700-681: A non-GNU kernel . (See below.) The original kernel of GNU Project is the GNU Hurd (together with the GNU Mach microkernel), which was the original focus of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). With the April 30, 2015 release of the Debian GNU/Hurd 2015 distro, GNU now provides all required components to assemble an operating system that users can install and use on a computer. However,
770-602: A program called UniPress, over a controversy around software code use in the GNU Emacs program. For most of the 80s, each GNU package had its own license: the Emacs General Public License, the GCC General Public License, etc. In 1989, FSF published a single license they could use for all their software, and which could be used by non-GNU projects: the GNU General Public License (GPL). This license
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#1733086218683840-483: A roadmap, there are technical guidelines. Instead of a central resource allocation, there are persons and companies who all have a stake in the further development of the Linux kernel, quite independently from one another: People like Linus Torvalds and I don’t plan the kernel evolution. We don’t sit there and think up the roadmap for the next two years, then assign resources to the various new features. That's because we don’t have any resources. The resources are all owned by
910-506: A study issued by the Linux Foundation, covering the commits for the releases 4.8 to 4.13, about 1500 developers were contributing from about 200–250 companies on average. The top 30 developers contributed a little more than 16% of the code. For companies, the top contributors are Intel (13.1%) and Red Hat (7.2%), Linaro (5.6%), IBM (4.1%), the second and fifth places are held by the 'none' (8.2%) and 'unknown' (4.1%) categories. Instead of
980-409: A total of 467 GNU packages (including decommissioned, 394 excluding) hosted on the official GNU development site. In its original meaning , and one still common in hardware engineering, the operating system is a basic set of functions to control the hardware and manage things like task scheduling and system calls . In modern terminology used by software developers, the collection of these functions
1050-491: Is a monolithic kernel rather than a microkernel was the topic of a debate between Andrew S. Tanenbaum , the creator of MINIX, and Torvalds. The Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate started in 1992 on the Usenet group comp.os.minix as a general discussion about kernel architectures. Version 0.95 was the first capable of running the X Window System . In March 1994, Linux 1.0.0 was released with 176,250 lines of code. As indicated by
1120-455: Is a recursive acronym for " GNU 's Not Unix!", chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like , but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code. Stallman chose the name by using various plays on words, including the song The Gnu . Development of the GNU operating system was initiated by Richard Stallman while he worked at MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . It
1190-593: Is also a coauthor of Linux in a Nutshell , a comprehensive Linux command reference also published by O'Reilly Media. "Linux in a Nutshell" was awarded "Favorite Linux Book of All Time" by Linux Journal . Love is Contributing Editor for Linux Journal and author of articles for the magazine. Love has been invited to speak around the world, including linux.conf.au in Australia, FOSDEM in Belgium, and GUADEC in England, where he
1260-575: Is licensed under the GNU Project 's own General Public License ( GPL ). GNU is also the project within which the free software concept originated. Richard Stallman , the founder of the project, views GNU as a "technical means to a social end". Relatedly, Lawrence Lessig states in his introduction to the second edition of Stallman's book Free Software, Free Society that in it Stallman has written about "the social aspects of software and how Free Software can create community and social justice". GNU
1330-540: Is now used by most of GNU software, as well as a large number of free software programs that are not part of the GNU Project; it also historically has been the most commonly used free software license (though recently challenged by the MIT license ). It gives all recipients of a program the right to run, copy, modify and distribute it, while forbidding them from imposing further restrictions on any copies they distribute. This idea
1400-782: Is often referred to as copyleft . In 1991, the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), then known as the Library General Public License, was written for the GNU C Library to allow it to be linked with proprietary software. 1991 also saw the release of version 2 of the GNU GPL. The GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), for documentation, followed in 2000. The GPL and LGPL were revised to version 3 in 2007, adding clauses to protect users against hardware restrictions that prevent users from running modified software on their own devices. Besides GNU's packages,
1470-541: Is significantly responsible for rising use of Linux overall. The cost to redevelop version 2.6.0 of the Linux kernel in a traditional proprietary development setting has been estimated to be US$ 612 million (€467M, £394M) in 2004 prices using the COCOMO person-month estimation model. In 2006, a study funded by the European Union put the redevelopment cost of kernel version 2.6.8 higher, at €882M ($ 1.14bn, £744M). This topic
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#17330862186831540-407: 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 [...] Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has
1610-432: Is usually referred to as a kernel , while an 'operating system' is expected to have a more extensive set of programs. The GNU project maintains two kernels itself, allowing the creation of pure GNU operating systems, but the GNU toolchain is also used with non-GNU kernels. Due to the two different definitions of the term 'operating system', there is an ongoing debate concerning the naming of distributions of GNU packages with
1680-449: The Free Software Foundation (FSF). In the late 1980s and 1990s, the FSF hired software developers to write the software needed for GNU. As GNU gained prominence, interested businesses began contributing to development or selling GNU software and technical support. The most prominent and successful of these was Cygnus Solutions , now part of Red Hat . The system's basic components include
1750-832: The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU C library (glibc), and GNU Core Utilities (coreutils), but also the GNU Debugger (GDB), GNU Binary Utilities (binutils), and the GNU Bash shell. GNU developers have contributed to Linux ports of GNU applications and utilities, which are now also widely used on other operating systems such as BSD variants, Solaris and macOS . Many GNU programs have been ported to other operating systems, including proprietary platforms such as Microsoft Windows and macOS. GNU programs have been shown to be more reliable than their proprietary Unix counterparts. As of June 2024 , there are
1820-549: The MINIX community, contributed to the project. At the time, the GNU Project had completed many components for its free UNIX replacement, the GNU OS , but its kernel, GNU Hurd , was incomplete. The project adopted the Linux kernel for its OS. Torvalds labeled the kernel with major version 0 to indicate that it was not yet intended for general use. Version 0.11, released in December 1991,
1890-594: The Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL), User-mode Linux integration into the mainline kernel sources, SELinux integration into the mainline kernel sources, InfiniBand support, and considerably more. Starting with 2.6.x releases, the kernel supported a large number of file systems; some designed for Linux, like ext3 , ext4 , FUSE , Btrfs , and others native to other operating systems like JFS , XFS , Minix, Xenix , Irix , Solaris , System V , Windows and MS-DOS . Though development had not used
1960-561: The University of Helsinki started working on an operating system, inspired by UNIX, for a personal computer. He started with a task switcher in Intel 80386 assembly language and a terminal driver . On 25 August 1991, Torvalds posted the following to comp.os.minix , a newsgroup on Usenet : 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
2030-1058: The atomic CMPXCHG instruction introduced with the i486 to allow reliable mutexes —making the 3.7 kernel series the last one still supporting the original processor. The same series unified support for the ARM processor. The numbering change from 2.6.39 to 3.0, and from 3.19 to 4.0, involved no meaningful technical differentiation; the major version number was increased simply to avoid large minor numbers. Stable 3.x.y kernels were released until 3.19 in February 2015. Version 3.11, released on 2 September 2013, added many new features such as new O_TMPFILE flag for open(2) to reduce temporary file vulnerabilities, experimental AMD Radeon dynamic power management, low-latency network polling, and zswap (compressed swap cache). In April 2015, Torvalds released kernel version 4.0. By February 2015, Linux had received contributions from nearly 12,000 programmers from more than 1,200 companies, including some of
2100-464: The "core," including architecture-specific code, kernel code, and mm code, while 60% is drivers. Contributions are submitted as patches, in the form of text messages on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML) (and often also on other mailing lists dedicated to particular subsystems). The patches must conform to a set of rules and to a formal language that, among other things, describes which lines of code are to be deleted and what others are to be added to
2170-737: The AMD Radeon FreeSync and NVIDIA Xavier display, fixes for F2FS , EXT4 and XFS , restored support for swap files on the Btrfs file system and continued work on the Intel Icelake Gen11 graphics and on the NXP i.MX8 SoCs. This release was noticeably larger than the rest, Torvalds mentioning that "The overall changes for all of the 5.0 release are much bigger." A total of 1,991 developers, of whom 334 were first-time collaborators, added more than 553,000 lines of code to version 5.8, breaking
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2240-420: The European Union. As of 7 March 2011 , using then-current LOC (lines of code) of a 2.6.x Linux kernel and wage numbers with David A. Wheeler's calculations it would cost approximately $ 3bn (about €2.2bn) to redevelop the Linux kernel as it keeps getting bigger. An updated calculation as of 26 September 2018 , using then-current 20,088,609 LOC (lines of code) for the 4.14.14 Linux kernel and
2310-519: The FSF. Notably, Debian , one of the biggest and oldest Linux distributions, refers to itself as Debian GNU/Linux . The GNU Project recommends that contributors assign the copyright for GNU packages to the Free Software Foundation, though the Free Software Foundation considers it acceptable to release small changes to an existing project to the public domain . However, this is not required; package maintainers may retain copyright to
2380-468: The GNU Project's licenses can and are used by many unrelated projects, such as the Linux kernel , often used with GNU software. A majority of free software such as the X Window System, is licensed under permissive free software licenses . The logo for GNU is a gnu head. Originally drawn by Etienne Suvasa, a bolder and simpler version designed by Aurelio Heckert is now preferred. It appears in GNU software and in printed and electronic documentation for
2450-564: The GNU packages they maintain, though since only the copyright holder may enforce the license used (such as the GNU GPL), the copyright holder in this case enforces it rather than the Free Software Foundation. For the development of needed software, Stallman wrote a license called the GNU General Public License (first called Emacs General Public License), with the goal to guarantee users freedom to share and change free software. Stallman wrote this license after his experience with James Gosling and
2520-504: The Hurd kernel is not yet considered production-ready but rather a base for further development and non-critical application usage. In 2012, a fork of the Linux kernel became officially part of the GNU Project in the form of Linux-libre , a variant of Linux with all proprietary components removed. The GNU Project has endorsed Linux-libre distributions, such as Trisquel , Parabola GNU/Linux-libre , PureOS and GNU Guix System . Because of
2590-540: The Linux 2.2.13 code for the support of the S/390 architecture. Version 2.4.0, released on 4 January 2001, contained support for ISA Plug and Play , USB , and PC Cards . Linux 2.4 added support for the Pentium 4 and Itanium (the latter introduced the ia64 ISA that was jointly developed by Intel and Hewlett-Packard to supersede the older PA-RISC ), and for the newer 64-bit MIPS processor. Development for 2.4. x changed
2660-456: The change will either be submitted as a single patch or in multiple patches of source code . In case of a single subsystem that is maintained by a single maintainer, these patches are sent as e-mails to the maintainer of the subsystem with the appropriate mailing list in Cc. The maintainer and the readers of the mailing list will review the patches and provide feedback. Once the review process has finished
2730-431: The computer architecture for which ITS was written, led to a decision that a portable system was necessary. It was thus decided that the development would be started using C and Lisp as system programming languages, and that GNU would be compatible with Unix. At the time, Unix was already a popular proprietary operating system. The design of Unix was modular, so it could be reimplemented piece by piece. Much of
2800-413: The current US national average programmer salary of $ 75,506 show that it would cost approximately $ 14,725,449,000 (£11,191,341,000) to rewrite the existing code. Most who use Linux do so via a Linux distribution . Some distributions ship the vanilla or stable kernel. However, several vendors (such as Red Hat and Debian ) maintain a customized source tree. These are usually updated at a slower pace than
2870-416: The development status of Hurd, GNU is usually paired with other kernels such as Linux or FreeBSD . Whether the combination of GNU libraries with external kernels is a GNU operating system with a kernel (e.g. GNU with Linux), because the GNU collection renders the kernel into a usable operating system as understood in modern software development, or whether the kernel is an operating system unto itself with
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2940-484: The first "official" version of Linux, version 0.02. [As] I mentioned a month ago, I'm working on a free version of a Minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reached the stage where it's even usable (though may not be depending on what you want), and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution. It is just version 0.02...but I've successfully run bash, gcc, gnu-make, gnu-sed, compress, etc. under it. Linux grew rapidly as many developers, including
3010-416: The first official kernel made using it was released. In 2005 the stable team was formed as a response to the lack of a kernel tree where people could work on bug fixes , and it would keep updating stable versions. In February 2008 the linux-next tree was created to serve as a place where patches aimed to be merged during the next development cycle gathered. Several subsystem maintainers also adopted
3080-581: The kernel community at the 2017 Embedded Linux Conference Europe. The issues brought up were discussed a few days later at the Maintainers Summit. Concerns over the lack of consistency in how maintainers responded to patches submitted by developers were echoed by Shuah Khan , the maintainer of the kernel self-test framework. Torvalds contended that there would never be consistency in the handling of patches because different kernel subsystems have, over time, adopted different development processes. Therefore, it
3150-570: The kernel so that old programs would work. Version 3.0 was released on 22 July 2011. On 30 May 2011, Torvalds announced that the big change was "NOTHING. Absolutely nothing." and asked, "...let's make sure we really make the next release not just an all new shiny number, but a good kernel too." After the expected 6–7 weeks of the development process, it would be released near the 20th anniversary of Linux. On 11 December 2012, Torvalds decided to reduce kernel complexity by removing support for i386 processors—specifically by not having to emulate
3220-406: The kernel with system software (e.g., the GNU C Library , systemd , and other Unix utilities and daemons ) and a wide selection of application software , but their usage share in desktops is low in comparison to other operating systems. Since Android , which is Linux, accounts for the majority of mobile device operating systems, and due to its rising use in embedded devices , Android
3290-467: The linux.conf.au (LCA) conference in 2018, developers expressed the view that the culture of the community has gotten much better in the past few years. Daniel Vetter, the maintainer of the Intel drm/i915 graphics kernel driver, commented that the "rather violent language and discussion" in the kernel community has decreased or disappeared. Laurent Pinchart asked developers for feedback on their experiences with
3360-537: The mainline kernel sources, PAE support, support for several new lines of CPUs , integration of Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) into the mainline kernel sources, support for up to 2 users (up from 2 ), support for up to 2 process IDs (64-bit only, 32-bit architectures still limited to 2 ), substantially increased the number of device types and the number of devices of each type, improved 64-bit support, support for file systems which support file sizes of up to 16 terabytes , in-kernel preemption , support for
3430-650: The needed software had to be written from scratch, but existing compatible third-party free software components were also used such as the TeX typesetting system, the X Window System , and the Mach microkernel that forms the basis of the GNU Mach core of GNU Hurd (the official kernel of GNU). With the exception of the aforementioned third-party components, most of GNU has been written by volunteers; some in their spare time, some paid by companies, educational institutions, and other non-profit organizations. In October 1985, Stallman set up
3500-652: The preemptive kernel. Love began work at Ximian on December 15, 2003, where he first served as Senior Engineer in the Linux Desktop Group. At Ximian, he spearheaded an effort, named Project Utopia , to better integrate hardware management into the Linux desktop. After Ximian's acquisition by Novell , Love rose to the position of Chief Architect of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop . At Novell, he worked on various kernel and GNOME projects, including inotify and Beagle. Love resigned from Novell on May 4, 2007, to work at Google on their mobile device platform, Android. Joining
3570-536: The previous kernel version. The Git kernel source tree names all developers who have contributed to the Linux kernel in the Credits directory and all subsystem maintainers are listed in Maintainers . As with many large open-source software projects, developers are required to adhere to the Contributor Covenant , a code of conduct intended to address harassment of minority contributors. Additionally, to prevent offense
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#17330862186833640-512: The project before it was announced, he engineered several kernel and system-level solutions for Android, including its novel shared memory subsystem, ashmem. Love worked at Google as Director of Engineering for Search Infrastructure through May 2021. Love now works as VP of Engineering at Toast where he builds cloud platforms for restaurants. Love lives in Boston, Massachusetts . Love is the author of Linux Kernel Development , now in its third edition,
3710-525: The record previously held by version 4.9. According to the Stack Overflow's annual Developer Survey of 2019, more than the 53% of all respondents have developed software for Linux and about 27% for Android , although only about 25% develop with Linux-based operating systems. Most websites run on Linux-based operating systems , and all of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers use some form of OS based on Linux. Linux distributions bundle
3780-603: The source code of the software they use, share software with other people, modify the behavior of software, and publish their modified versions of the software. This philosophy was published as the GNU Manifesto in March 1985. Richard Stallman's experience with the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS), an early operating system written in assembly language that became obsolete due to discontinuation of PDP-10 ,
3850-437: The specified files. These patches can be automatically processed so that system administrators can apply them in order to make just some changes to the code or to incrementally upgrade to the next version. Linux is distributed also in GNU zip (gzip) and bzip2 formats. A developer who wants to change the Linux kernel writes and tests a code change. Depending on how significant the change is and how many subsystems it modifies,
3920-407: The subsystem maintainer accepts the patches in the relevant Git kernel tree. If the changes to the Linux kernel are bug fixes that are considered important enough, a pull request for the patches will be sent to Torvalds within a few days. Otherwise, a pull request will be sent to Torvalds during the next merge window. The merge window usually lasts two weeks and starts immediately after the release of
3990-503: The suffix -next for trees containing code which they mean to submit for inclusion in the next release cycle. As of January 2014 , the in-development version of Linux is held in an unstable branch named linux-next . The 20th anniversary of Linux was celebrated by Torvalds in July 2011 with the release of version 3.0.0. As 2.6 had been the version number for 8 years, a new uname26 personality that reports 3.x as 2.6.40+x had to be added to
4060-429: The use of inclusive terminology within the source code is mandated. GNU GNU ( / ɡ n uː / ) is an extensive collection of free software (394 packages as of June 2024 ), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popularly known as Linux . Most of GNU
4130-407: The vanilla branch, and they usually include all fixes from the relevant stable branch, but at the same time they can also add support for drivers or features which had not been released in the vanilla version the distribution vendor started basing its branch from. The community of Linux kernel developers comprises about 5000–6000 members. According to the "2017 State of Linux Kernel Development",
4200-444: The various corporations who use and contribute to Linux, as well as by the various independent contributors out there. It's those people who own the resources who decide... Notable conflicts among Linux kernel developers: Prominent Linux kernel developers have been aware of the importance of avoiding conflicts between developers. For a long time there was no code of conduct for kernel developers due to opposition by Torvalds. However,
4270-949: The version number, it was the first version considered suitable for a production environment . In June 1996, after release 1.3, Torvalds decided that Linux had evolved enough to warrant a new major number, and so labeled the next release as version 2.0.0. Significant features of 2.0 included symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), support for more processors types and support for selecting specific hardware targets and for enabling architecture-specific features and optimizations. The make *config family of commands of kbuild enable and configure options for building ad hoc kernel executables ( vmlinux ) and loadable modules. Version 2.2, released on 20 January 1999, improved locking granularity and SMP management, added m68k , PowerPC , Sparc64 , Alpha , and other 64-bit platforms support. Furthermore, it added new file systems including Microsoft 's NTFS read-only capability. In 1999, IBM published its patches to
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#17330862186834340-700: The word 'hug'. Developers who feel treated unfairly can report this to the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board. In July 2013, the maintainer of the USB 3.0 driver Sage Sharp asked Torvalds to address the abusive commentary in the kernel development community. In 2014, Sharp backed out of Linux kernel development, saying that "The focus on technical excellence, in combination with overloaded maintainers, and people with different cultural and social norms, means that Linux kernel maintainers are often blunt, rude, or brutal to get their job done". At
4410-515: The world's largest software and hardware vendors. Version 4.1 of Linux, released in June 2015, contains over 19.5 million lines of code contributed by almost 14,000 programmers. Linus Torvalds announced that kernel version 4.22 would instead be numbered 5.0 in March 2019, stating that "'5.0' doesn't mean anything more than that the 4.x numbers started getting big enough that I ran out of fingers and toes." It featured many major additions such as support for
4480-401: Was a keynote speaker. Love has written and co-written several books on the Linux operating system: Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open source , UNIX-like kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system (OS) which was created to be
4550-445: Was agreed upon that each kernel subsystem maintainer would document the rules for patch acceptance. Linux is evolution, not intelligent design ! The kernel source code, a.k.a. source tree, is managed in the Git version control system – also created by Torvalds. As of 2021 , the 5.11 release of the Linux kernel had around 30.34 million lines of code. Roughly 14% of the code is part of
4620-601: Was born in 1981 in south Florida . He attended and graduated from Charles W. Flanagan High School . For his undergraduate studies, he attended the University of Florida , where he graduated with both a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science . While still in college, Love was employed as a kernel hacker at MontaVista Software . At MontaVista, he worked on procps and several kernel-related projects, including one of his most notable,
4690-512: Was called the GNU Project, and was publicly announced on September 27, 1983, on the net.unix-wizards and net.usoft newsgroups by Stallman. Software development began on January 5, 1984, when Stallman quit his job at the Lab so that they could not claim ownership or interfere with distributing GNU components as free software. The goal was to bring a completely free software operating system into existence. Stallman wanted computer users to be free to study
4760-487: Was driven by programmers and testers across the world. With the support of the POSIX APIs, through the libC that, whether needed, acts as an entry point to the kernel address space, Linux could run software and applications that had been developed for Unix. On 19 January 1992, the first post to the new newsgroup alt.os.linux was submitted. On 31 March 1992, the newsgroup was renamed comp.os.linux . The fact that Linux
4830-559: Was revisited in October 2008 by Amanda McPherson, Brian Proffitt, and Ron Hale-Evans. Using David A. Wheeler's methodology, they estimated redevelopment of the 2.6.25 kernel now costs $ 1.3bn (part of a total $ 10.8bn to redevelop Fedora 9). Again, Garcia-Garcia and Alonso de Magdaleno from University of Oviedo (Spain) estimate that the value annually added to kernel was about €100M between 2005 and 2007 and €225M in 2008, it would cost also more than €1bn (about $ 1.4bn as of February 2010) to develop in
4900-435: Was the first version to be self-hosted ; compiled on a computer running the Linux kernel. When Torvalds released version 0.12 in February 1992, he adopted the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) over his previous self-drafted license, which had not permitted commercial redistribution. In contrast to Unix , all source files of Linux are freely available, including device drivers . The initial success of Linux
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