History of GNU, Linux, and Open Source Software
Origins of Free Source Code and Public Licence Use
May 23, 2008
The acronym stands for "GNU is Not UNIX" and the Project began in 1983 with the lofty aim to develop a free and complete UNIX-like operating system, although it is important to note that “free” in this case is more like “free speech" and not “free beer."
GNU and GCC
The GNU Project began as the brainchild of illustrious Richard Stallman, whose name sparks cult-like ardor from techies and coders everywhere for his propulsion of the free-source movement. Stallman may be eqaully well-known for his work at the Artificial Intelligence lab at MIT, but he also created the lifeblood behind GNU, the hailed GCC (GNU C Compiler). This singularly impressive feat represents such engineering beauty that is said to still be one of the “most efficient and robust compilers ever created.”
A compiler is a program or set of programs that translates one programming language to another. The trouble was that the compiler by itself was not enough. It needed a kernel, other basic OS elements, and a software distribution network in place before things could really take off.
Incidentally, the name GNU (pronounced g-noo), is also the name of a large African ox-like antelope (pronounced noo or nyoo) with drooping mane and beard, long tufted tail, and curved horns in both sexes. The gnu (noo), interestingly, has been adopted as the GNU's (g-noo's) unofficial mascot, though the relation seems to be in name alone.
MINIX and UNIX
Concurrent to the GNU Project, Dutch professor Andrew Tanenbaum designed an operating system from scratch with a mere 12,000 lines of code for his students to study in the classroom. MINIX, as he called it, was designed to run on the popular Intel microprocessors of the time. Based on UNIX, a time-sharing system written in the programming language of "C," it did not have the polish or robustness of commercial grade systems, but its advantage (and eventually its fame) was that its source code was available to anyone.
For the first time, both novice programmers and closet hackers could view the source code of a working OS, a viciously-guarded secret in the commercial world. One of those novices was Linus Torvalds, then at the University of Helsinki. In an e-mail dated August 1991, Torvalds spoke of a free operating system that he had been tinkering with, the basis of which was MINIX but included "every feature of GCC" the young student could think of. The buzz and flurry of excitement that this and subsequent emails created amongst the coding community began to gather steam and vigor, and, after multiple developer contributions, what Torvalds ended up with was, in his own words, "a better MINIX than MINIX."
Beginnings of the GNU/LINUX Operating System
According to Ragib Hasan, in an article published by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, it took almost three years and the work of many programmers to release the original LINUX kernel (version 1.0) in 1994. Finally, Stallman's open development model was realized, and the world had its first stable and free commercial operating system (the GNU/LINUX OS) and subsequent public license software.
Today, Linux comes in many flavors, such as Slackware, Debian, Red Hat, and others. All are free with the exception of Red Hat, who discontinued support on its last free version in 2004. While LINUX continues to grow (estimates are in the 10s of millions) in popularity it does not yet enjoy the support and massive software development and distribution networks of commercial for-profit companies like Apple and Microsoft.
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