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Who Wrote Linux?
Dozix007 writes "There is an interesting article by Jan Stafford on the myths of Linux creation. This episode of the series of Linux creation myths, one fellow plays "I Spy," and the other reveals the true origins of the man from Redmond. The author is offering a $50 gift certificate and IT books to the best spinners of tall Linux creation tales. If you can outdo these tall tales."
Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969) began the development of Linux, an operating system kernel, and today acts as the project coordinator (or Benevolent Dictator for Life). Inspired by the demo-system Minix developed by Andrew Tanenbaum, he felt the need for a capable UNIX operating system that he could run on his home PC. Torvalds did the original development of the Linux kernel primarily in his own time and on his equipment.
... I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less."
Torvalds was born in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, as the son of Nils and Anna Torvalds. Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s, his father a Communist who in the mid-1970s spent a year studying in Moscow. This caused embarrassment to Linus at the time since other children would tease him about his father's politics.
His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority (roughly 6% of Finland's population). Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling. He attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a masters degree in computer science.
Linus Torvalds currently lives in San Jose, California with his wife Tove (six-time Finnish national Karate champion), whom he first met in fall 1993, his cat Randi (short for Mithrandir, the Elvish name for Gandalf, a wizard in The Lord of the Rings), and his three daughters Patricia Miranda (born December 5, 1996), Daniela Yolanda (born April 16, 1998) and Celeste Amanda (born November 20, 2000). In June 2004 Linus purchased a home in Beaverton, Oregon and enrolled his children in school.
He worked for Transmeta Corporation from February 1997 until June 2003, and is now seconded to OSDL to work on the Linux kernel full-time. Although OSDL is based in Portland, Oregon, he worked from his home in San Jose.
His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of Linux.
Linus's law, a tenet inspired by Linus and coined by Eric S. Raymond in his paper The Cathedral and the Bazaar, is: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." A deep bug is one which is hard to find, and with many people looking for it, the hope (and so far most experience) is that no bug will be deep. Both men share an open source philosophy, which has been in part (and implicitly) based on this belief.
Unlike many open source "evangelists", Torvalds keeps a low profile and generally refuses to comment on competing software products, such as Microsoft's commercially dominant Windows operating system. He is neutral enough to even have been criticized by the GNU project, specifically for having worked on proprietary software with Transmeta and for his use and alleged advocacy of Bitkeeper. Nevertheless, Torvalds has occasionally reacted with strong statements to what has been widely perceived as anti-Linux (and anti open source) FUD from proprietary software vendors like Microsoft or SCO.
For example, in one e-mail reaction to statements by Microsoft Senior-VP Craig Mundie, who criticized open source software for not being innovative and destructive to intellectual property, Torvalds wrote: "I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton? He's not only famous for having set the foundations for classical mechanics (and the original theory of gravitation, which is what most people remember, along with the apple tree story), but he is also famous for how he acknowledged the achievement: If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which he replaced by his own OS; he gave a working name of Linux (Linus' Minix); but thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to have it named Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter x). His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded
Linus is the copyright holder for the name Linux
I think you mean "trademark" holder.
Pierre de Fermat wrote something like that in the margain of a book. He was refering to an alleged proof he had of what became known as "Fermats last theorem" which states:
For all positive integers n > 2 there are no solutions to the equation A^n + B^n = C^n for non-zero integers A, B, C.
This reply is, strictly speaking, entirely offtopic. Feel free to moderate it as such.
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In the end, some guy spent many years tracking it down and eventually proving Fermat was correct! He has to invent some new maths theories as well to do this. Was Fermat that good?!?
Here is a good book if you fancy finding out more....Amazon. I've read it a few years back, it is good!
It's possible that Linus requires you to agree to assign copyright to him to submit code, but I doubt it.
They (the kernel devs) don't, all they want is your permission to release it under the GPL. The FSF, though, demands the copyright on all contributions to GNU software.
I love C++
There: There is a cow on the roof of my car.
Their: They put their cow on the roof of my car.
They're: They're laughing at the cow on the roof of my car.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The homepage of Linux Gold Corp. is heavy with the use of "Linux".
That's okay, actually. Trademark law permits the same mark to be used by multiple entities as long as they're in sufficiently different businesses that there is no real danger of confusion. Since no one is likely to seriously confuse a computer operating system with an Alaskan gold mining company, the courts would allow both of them to continue using the mark.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You are right.
Even the word UNIX is not exclusively for the operating system we all know and love (or hate!)
When NCR was part of AT&T, I was one day called by my manager because he was alerted that some company selling "pesticides" was using UNIX as a trademark to its product.
Turns out that UNIX was trademarked by some French fungicide company, as Dennis Ritchie has detailed.
Trademarks can be "duplicated" across product boundaries.
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Linux is a kernel. Kernel's dont have UI's.
Sad, ignorant troll. It has been written long ago:
http://bofh.ntk.net/XFiles.html
Everything else will be just a sad imitation...
P.S. It is the same guy who writes the BOFH stories. Just these are much better: http://bofh.ntk.net/OtherStuff.html
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Fermat's words were "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof but this margin is too small to contain it." That's why he didn't write it. Also, the proof, found in 1995 I think, was hundreds of pages of complex exponential algebra, clearly not what Fermat came up with.
ResidntGeek
This article has really appeared on an Italian well known magazine. Clarence discovered this pearl and saved this marvellous article from oblivion. It explains not only who wrote Linux, but everything about a nasty cult called "Open World" and its terrorist activities. I had a very good laugh reading this. http://www.clarence.com/contents/tecnologia/penne/ panerai/articolo.html
(warning: basic Italian knowledge needed)