Weekly Edition
Return to the Press page
| |||||||||||||
It's *Not* The 15th Birthday of Linux - and Why That Matters (Linux Journal)
Glyn Moody
questions recent proclamations about the 15th birthday of Linux.
"This is one of the most profound strengths of free software - that the software is never really finished, with the corollary that it is also never really *not* finished. Huge quantum jumps are rare: mostly it's more granular.
That's why I think it's misguided to celebrate Linux 1.0: it gives the impression that free software is like any other proprietary bit of code, rubbish until you hit the magic release number, and somehow finished when you do. If you want to celebrate Linux (and that's an eminently sensible thing to do), the only possible date to choose is when the project was started - after all, that's what the "birth" bit in birthday means. The trouble is, even that date doesn't exist."
(Log in to post comments)
It's *Not* The 15th Birthday of Linux - and Why That Matters (Linux Journal) Posted Mar 19, 2009 16:42 UTC (Thu) by johnkarp (subscriber, #39285) [Link]
If software can have a 'birth', it can certainly have a gestation period as well. And in modern times there's nothing too magical about biological birth days, because they can be induced.
It's *Not* The 15th Birthday of Linux - and Why That Matters (Linux Journal) Posted Mar 19, 2009 16:45 UTC (Thu) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]
I'd say that prior to the first public posting, Linux was gestating, and that the "Birth Certificate" is that very first public posting. That's what the little voices tell me to say, anyway.
It's *Not* The 15th Birthday of Linux - and Why That Matters (Linux Journal) Posted Mar 19, 2009 18:42 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Agreed. I agree with the people who have said that Linux's birthday can only be 25 Aug 1991, the date of the "won't be big and professional like gnu" post.
Was 2.0 a big deal? Bigger than 2.2 or 2.4? And what does it mean if Linux never reaches 3.0?
On the other hand, I'm all for finding causes to celebrate!
Old news Posted Mar 19, 2009 19:26 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] Our esteemed editor said it before I did! http://lwn.net/Articles/322910/Among them are the "worse is better" notion expressed by Richard Gabriel in 1991 - the year the Linux kernel was born.
Sorry, but I'm on the 1.0-is-a-good-thing-to-remember bandwagon. Posted Mar 20, 2009 2:31 UTC (Fri) by kena (guest, #2735) [Link]
I guess the real question is, *which* are we celebrating? The advent of Linux as an idea? Or Linux as a reasonably stable, proud-to-be-here OS?
Honestly, though, I think the whole thing's just silly. For example, Linus has *always* released "dot-oh" releases when he was felt it was damn-well ready. Not so much for most commercial packages, though; they're marketing driven. (I think we need look no further than Vista to prove that.) While I'll be the last to say that Linux is free of politics, it is refreshing to have a beneficent dictator who usually makes the right choices. And his choice to release 1.0 about when he released it was a good one... and worthy of being commemorated. Attempting to "disown" the commercial software folks is just silly. They're them, we're us. And thinking of version numbers as some sort of (for lack of a better word) "conspiracy" to paint us with the brush of commercialism is just silly.
$.02, YMMV, etc.
It's *Not* The 15th Birthday of Linux - and Why That Matters (Linux Journal) Posted Mar 20, 2009 13:37 UTC (Fri) by nio (guest, #53157) [Link]
> Agreed. I agree with the people who have said that Linux's birthday can only be 25 Aug 1991, the date of the "won't be big and professional like gnu" post.
+1
It's indeed not easy to set a specific date, but if I were to choose one, I'd choose the date of the above mentioned post, to me it has the most value.
Sure, there isn't exactly one date to call the birth day of Linux. You can pick the day Linus wrote the first line of code, or the day he decided to do so, or the day he made version 1.0, but in the end it doesn't matter that much anyway, what matters is the fact _that_ it happened, and I'm really thankful it happened.
For me, I just like the thought of august 25 1991 because of Linus' post and the fact that my birthday is on august 25.. :)
It's *Not* The 15th Birthday of Linux - and Why That Matters (Linux Journal) Posted Mar 24, 2009 5:18 UTC (Tue) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link]
My birthday is a scant 4 days later. Ah well. :-)
It's *Not* The 15th Birthday of Linux - and Why That Matters (Linux Journal) Posted Mar 20, 2009 9:21 UTC (Fri) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link]
Heh - here is an article from 10 years ago about this:
http://linux-bangalore.org/blug/articles/bday.php
Disclaimer - yeah, I wrote it.
It's *Not* The 15th Birthday of Linux - and Why That Matters (Linux Journal) Posted Mar 20, 2009 10:28 UTC (Fri) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link] For "birth", I probably would put the first release on an FTP server as "birth" of a free software project. The first line written into a file is the "conception". There may be different states of a project, like announcements of what it will be, but consider that as similar to pregnant women who know the gender after an ultrasonic. Today it might be a bit different, since thanks to git and other VCS repositories, the first line often goes public straight away. But the fundamental definition of "birth" is that it is not in some private place of the creator, but out in the world.
Freax Posted Mar 24, 2009 5:27 UTC (Tue) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link]
I've seen a couple people say here that Linus' first name for Linux was "Freax". Is that actually correct? My understanding was that he initially wanted to call it Linux, but he changed the name to Freax because he thought the name Linux was a bit too egotistical.
So wouldn't Freax be its second name?
Freax Posted Mar 26, 2009 21:52 UTC (Thu) by nio (guest, #53157) [Link]
Lemme look that up for you:
"
And Ari Lemke, who insured that it made its way to the ftp
Okay, so I copied that from freax.org :P
Anyway, it seems that the kernel's full name would be "Freax Linux" :)
|
|||||||||||||