From: "David Leimbach" <leimy2k@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] [OT] hypothetical questions
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 11:41:04 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <3e1162e60603281141n5df3780dn15cef9816f0e47f6@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <0f95e8adbafc27a663f7331cb59b97bc@swtch.com>
Many argue, including Linus himself, that had 386BSD had floating
point emulation (which Linus eventually contributed to 386BSD by the
way) and the licensing issues and legal battles between Unix <-> BSD
hadn't happend, he might have not made Linux.
I think he said all of that in his book "Just for Fun".
Dave
On 3/28/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> The existence of Minix certainly did play a role in Linus'
> decision to start Linux, at least according to Tanenbaum
> in the 3rd ed. of his OS textbook (no online ref; I flipped
> through a copy yesterday), and according to Linus'
> post reproduced at http://www.linux10.org/history/.
> I'm sure there are plenty of other references too,
> and Google can find them as well as 9fans can.
>
> That's not the same as Tanenbaum playing an active role
> in the creation of Linux itself, which he didn't. I think that
> was Sape's point, though I don't think it's what the original
> post was trying to imply, especially given the earlier
> comments about organizations inadvertently helping to
> create other things. (If Sun hadn't unbundled their
> compilers, maybe gcc wouldn't have taken off. Etc.)
> If the Minix license had been different, maybe Linus
> wouldn't have created a new system. Too late now.
>
> Sape raises an interesting and unanswerable question:
> if there had been no Minix, would Linus have still been led
> to create his own OS? You'll have to build a time machine
> to find out.
>
> (This post is a futile attempt to snip this off-topic branch
> at its root. If nothing else at least it's tagged.)
>
> Russ
>
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2006-03-28 19:41 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 70+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2006-03-28 0:40 [9fans] new compilers erik quanstrom
2006-03-28 17:52 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2006-03-28 18:15 ` Bakul Shah
2006-03-28 18:29 ` Sape Mullender
2006-03-28 18:52 ` LiteStar numnums
2006-03-28 19:13 ` [9fans] [OT] hypothetical questions Russ Cox
2006-03-28 19:28 ` Brantley Coile
2006-03-28 20:26 ` LiteStar numnums
2006-03-28 21:18 ` Lou Kamenov
2006-03-29 6:14 ` Bruce Ellis
2006-03-28 19:41 ` David Leimbach [this message]
2006-03-28 19:15 ` [9fans] new compilers Victor Nazarov
2006-03-28 19:22 ` [9fans] [OT] linus, the early years Charles Forsyth
2006-03-28 20:07 ` Victor Nazarov
2006-03-29 16:33 ` [9fans] new compilers Burton Samograd
2006-03-29 16:49 ` [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not? Victor Nazarov
2006-03-29 18:04 ` Burton Samograd
2006-03-29 18:45 ` Federico G. Benavento
2006-03-29 19:41 ` andrey mirtchovski
2006-03-29 23:27 ` Dave Eckhardt
2006-03-30 0:38 ` quanstro
2006-03-30 1:29 ` Ronald G Minnich
2006-03-30 2:40 ` quanstro
2006-03-30 1:55 ` Ronald G Minnich
2006-03-30 2:13 ` Roman Shaposhnick
2006-03-30 4:26 ` jmk
2006-03-30 16:08 ` David Leimbach
2006-03-30 16:02 ` David Leimbach
2006-03-30 18:14 ` Dave Eckhardt
2006-03-30 12:46 ` Brantley Coile
2006-03-30 13:43 ` Richard Miller
2006-03-30 13:49 ` Brantley Coile
2006-03-29 18:20 ` Skip Tavakkolian
2006-03-29 18:58 ` Victor Nazarov
2006-03-29 23:16 ` lucio
2006-03-30 2:00 ` Martin C. Atkins
2006-03-30 5:06 ` lucio
2006-03-29 21:17 ` [9fans] new compilers Francisco J Ballesteros
2006-03-29 21:44 ` Wes Kussmaul
2006-04-02 18:17 ` Aharon Robbins
2006-04-02 18:33 ` Bruce Ellis
2006-04-02 19:47 ` lucio
2006-04-02 20:12 ` Skip Tavakkolian
2006-04-02 20:16 ` LiteStar numnums
2006-04-03 4:35 ` lucio
2006-04-03 5:38 ` George Michaelson
2006-04-03 6:45 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2006-04-03 5:38 ` LiteStar numnums
2006-04-03 8:31 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2006-04-03 9:36 ` uriel
2006-04-03 12:50 ` Martin C. Atkins
2006-04-03 9:39 ` lucio
2006-04-03 13:46 ` Brantley Coile
2006-04-03 14:30 ` David Leimbach
2006-04-03 16:02 ` Bruce Ellis
2006-04-03 20:41 ` Jack Johnson
2006-04-03 21:02 ` uriel
2006-04-03 21:32 ` Ronald G Minnich
2006-04-03 23:42 ` Bruce Ellis
2006-04-04 0:29 ` Anthony Sorace
2006-04-04 5:02 ` Bruce Ellis
2006-04-04 3:15 ` Jack Johnson
2006-04-04 3:28 ` Jack Johnson
2006-04-04 6:31 ` David Leimbach
2006-04-04 4:21 ` lucio
2006-04-05 1:00 ` Brantley Coile
2006-04-05 4:35 ` Bruce Ellis
2006-04-04 12:31 ` rog
2006-04-03 3:17 ` plan9
2006-04-03 4:17 ` lucio
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