Messages in this thread | | | From | Steve VanDevender <> | Date | Tue, 4 May 1999 18:59:53 -0700 (PDT) | Subject | Re: Ken Thompson interview in IEEE Computer magazine (fwd) |
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G. Allen Morris III writes: > >>>Steve VanDevender said: > > [...] > > Linux looks a bit fragmented and chaotic makes some sense. That > > he considers Linux to be purely a backlash against Microsoft does > > seem to indicate he doesn't really know much about the history of > > Linux, though. > > IMHO Linux was more of a backlash against AT&T and the cost of a > UNIX license than Microsoft. Of course having MSDOS and Windows > 3.0 to compare and contrast Linux against was a great benifit -- > I am sure.
AT&T's lawsuit that delayed the release of 4.4BSD certainly gave Linux an opportunity to compete more seriously against free BSD UNIX derivatives. If a BSD for Intel systems had existed sooner then even Linus admitted that Linux would probably not exist now.
To call Linux a backlash against anything assumes that people chose it out of spite, when in most cases people have chosen it out of preference, certainly more so in the early days. I didn't start running Linux because I wanted to stick it to Microsoft or AT&T; I ran Linux because it was easily available and because I really wanted a UNIX-like environment on a home computer.
And if you want to see where Ken Thompson's sense of esthetics began, I highly recommend buying the now publicly-available "Lions book", more formally titled _Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition with Source Code_, Peer-to-Peer Communications, ISBN 1-57398-013-7.
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