offshoots such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD to be demonstrably superior to GNU/Linux both in terms of performance and security, the number of FreeBSD and OpenBSD users remains a fraction of the total GNU/Linux user population.
To view a sample analysis of the relative success of GNU/Linux in relation to other free software operating systems, see the essay by New Zealand hacker, Liam Greenwood, “Why is Linux Successful” (1999).
4.
See Maui High Performance Computing Center Speech.
5.
GNU/Linux user-population numbers are sketchy at best, which is why I’ve provided such a broad range. The 100,000 total comes from the Red Hat “Milestones” site,
6.
I wrote this Winston Churchill analogy before Stallman himself sent me his own unsolicited comment on Churchill:
World War II and the determination needed to win it was a very strong memory as I was growing up. Statements such as Churchill’s, “We will fight them in the landing zones, we will fight them on the beaches . . . we will never surrender”, have always resonated for me.
7.
See Ian Murdock, “A Brief History of Debian”, (January 6, 1994): Appendix A, “The Debian Manifesto”.
8.
Jamie Zawinski, a former Lucid programmer who would go on to head the Mozilla development team, has a web site that documents the Lucid/GNU Emacs fork, titled, “The Lemacs/FSFmacs Schism”.
9.
Young uses the term “public domain” incorrectly here. Public domain means not protected by copyright. GPL-protected programs are by definition protected by copyright.
10.
This quote is taken from the much-publicized Torvalds-Tanenbaum “flame war” following the initial release of Linux. In the process of defending his choice of a nonportable monolithic kernel design, Torvalds says he started working on Linux as a way to learn more about his new 386 PC. “If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I’d not have bothered to even start my project”. See Chris DiBona et al.,
Chapter 11 notes
1.
See Peter Salus, “FYI-Conference on Freely Redistributable Software, 2/2, Cambridge” (1995) (archived by Terry Winograd).
http://hci.stanford.edu/pcd- archives/pcd-fyi/1995/0078.html
2.
Although Linus Torvalds is Finnish, his mother tongue is Swedish. “The Rampantly Unofficial Linus FAQ” offers a brief explanation:
Finland has a significant (about 6%) Swedish-speaking minority population. They call themselves “finlandssvensk” or “finlandssvenskar” and consider themselves Finns; many of their families have lived in Finland for centuries. Swedish is one of Finland’s two official languages.
http://tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/linus/
3.
Brooks’ Law is the shorthand summary of the following quote taken from Brooks’ book:
Since software construction is inherently a systems effort-an exercise in complex interrelationships- communication effort is great, and it quickly dominates the decrease in individual task time brought about by partitioning. Adding more men then lengthens, not shortens, the schedule.
See Fred P. Brooks,
4.
See Eric Raymond, “The Cathredral and the Bazaar” (1997).
5.
See Malcolm Maclachlan, “Profit Motive Splits Open Source Movement”,