[humorix] Brief History Of Linux (Part 4) [long]

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

Brief History Of Linux (Part 4)
May 27, 2000

We're back with the next "brief" installment in our series
on the history of Linux. We apologize for the delay in
publishing this fourth installment, but it takes time to
make this stuff up. Sit back, grab a caffeine-laced
beverage, and follow along as we trace the development of
the Linux Cathedral.

* The GNU Project

Meet Richard M. Stallman, an MIT hacker who would found the
GNU Project and create Emacs, the
operating-system-disguised-as -a-text-editor that everyone
loves to hate.  RMS, the first member of the Three Initials
Club (later joined by ESR and JWZ), experienced such
frustration with software wrapped in arcane, forbidding
license agreements that he embarked on the GNU Project to
produce and share free software.

His journey began when trying to get a printer to work with
his system.  The printer's proprietary drivers simply would
not function properly and RMS was unable to fix the problem
without the source code.  RMS discovered the fine print for
the printer's driver software, written in Flyspeck-3, that
no other end-user had ever to read, or even noticed.  This
license stated:

   You do not own this software.  You own a license to use
   one copy of this software, a license that we can revoke
   at any time for any reason whatsoever without a refund.
   Since we did not sell you this software, we are not
   responsible in any way if it contains bugs or doesn't
   work, or if it causes millions of dollars of damage. 
   You may not copy, distribute, alter, disassemble, or
   hack the software.  The source code is locked away in a
   vault in Cleveland. If you say anything negative about
   this software you will be in violation of this license
   and required to forfeit your soul and/or first born
   child to us.     

The harsh wording of this license shocked RMS.  He would be
unable to use the printer because the drivers were locked
behind a reinforced wall of legalese.  The computer
industry, RMS reasoned, was in it's infancy, which could
only mean one thing: it was going to get much, much worse.

He had a dream that night... a horrible, terrible nightmare
set in 2020 in which all of society was held captive by
copyright law.  In particular, everyone's brain waves were
monitored by the US Department of Copyrights.  If your
thoughts referenced a copyrighted idea in any fashion, you
had to pay a royalty. To make it worse, a handful of
corporations held fully 99.9% of all intellectual property
rights.

Coincidentally, Bill Gates experienced a similar dream that
same night. To him, however, it was not a horrible,
terrible nightmare, but a wonderful utopian vision.  The
thought of lemmings... er, customers paying a royalty
everytime they hummed a copyrighted song in their head or
remembered a passage in a book was simply too marvelous for
the budding monopolist.

RMS, waking up from his nightmare, vowed to fight the
oncoming Copyright Nightmare.  The GNU Project was born. 
The idea was simple: develop a system with
built-from-scratch free software covered by a viral
copyleft license. Such a system would slowly infiltrate the
computer industry and put a stop to marketers and lawyers.

The plan called for a kernel, compiler, editor, and other
tools.  Unfortunately, RMS and his fledgling GNU Project
became bogged down with Emacs, the editor, that the
operating system kernel, HURD, was shoved on the back
burner.  Built with LISP (Lots of Incomprehensible
Statements with Parentheses), Emacs became bloated in a way
no non-Microsoft program ever has. Indeed, for a short
while RMS pretended that Emacs really was the GNU operating
system kernel.

Over the years RMS and his crew continued to hack on Emacs
and waste time in doctor mode, but HURD remained in
vaporous pre-alpha development for years.  

Of course we all know what happened next.  Linus Torvalds,
thanks to alien intervention as documented in the previous
installment, throws together a Unix clone from scratch and
places it under the GNU viral license.  The Revolution
begins.

* Right place, right time

Linus Torvalds certainly wasn't the only person to create
their own operating system from scratch.  No, we're not
talking about Tim Peterson, the person behind MS-DOS, since
DOS isn't an operating system.  Other people working from
their leaky basements did create their own operating
systems, however, and now they are sick that they didn't
become an Alpha Geek like Torvalds (or at least a Beta Geek
like Alan Cox).  

Unlike these other failed projects, Linus had one advantage
not many else did: Internet access.  The world was full of
half-implemented-Unix-kernels at the time, but they were
sitting isolated on some hacker's hard drive, destined to
be destroyed by a hard drive crash or thrown out into the
trash can.  Thankfully that never happened to Linux, mostly
because everyone with Net access could download a copy
instead of paying the $50 shipping charge to receive the
code on a three-foot stack of unreliable floppy disks.

Indeed, buried deep within a landfill in Lansing, Michigan
sits a stack of still-readable 5-1/4 floppies containing
the only known copy of "Windows Killer", a fully functional
Unix kernel so elegant, so efficient, so easy-to-use that
Ken Thompson himself would be jealous of its design. 
Unfortunately, before the system could be distributed, the
author's mother threw out the stack of floppies (along with
a Babe Ruth rookie card) in a bout of spring cleaning.  The
14 year old author's talents were lost forever as his
parents coerced him into attending Law School.

* He should've patented the idea

While 1999 was the year of the Linux Portal Gold Rush, the
first ever Linux portal was actually founded in 1992. A
small newsletter published by Lars Wirzenius, titled "Linux
News",  was distributed via FTP, Usenet, and e-mail. With
the exception of flame wars and gratuitious spelling
errors, this ancient (pre-Web) newsletter featured the same
type of content as today's Slashdot, Linux Today, and
Freshmeat.  

Issue 3 (October 1992) contains what may very well be the
first published Linus interview. Some quotes from this
issue:

"I doubt Linux will be here to stay, and maybe Hurd is the
wave of the future (and maybe not)..."

"I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it
either dies out or merges with something else. That doesn't
necessarily mean I'll make weekly patches for the rest of my
life, but hopefully they won't be needed as much when things
stabilize." [If only he knew what he was getting into.]

"I've planned the 1.0 release for a long time, and I've
always waited just a bit longer.  Right now my final
deadline is "before X-mas" [Apparently Linus was
unintentionally using the Microsoft vaporware tactic of
giving a release date without actually giving a release
date. Is that Christmas '92 -- or '94, the year when 1.0
was actually released? What works for Microsoft sometimes
works for Linux, too.]

"World domination? No, I'm not interested in that. 
Galactic domination, on the other hand..."

"Several people have already wondered if Linux should adopt
a logo or mascot. Somebody even suggested a penguin for
some strange reason, which I don't particularly like: how
is a flightless bird supposed to represent an operating
system? Well, it might work okay for a Microsoft product or
even Minix..."

"I would give Andy Tanenbaum a big fat 'F'."

* The Snowball Effect

Back in early 1991 Linux was just some magnetic fields
sitting on some Finnish student's hard drive. By the
mid-1990's the Linux community was burgeoning as countless
geeks fled Redmond monopolistic oppression, Armonk
cluelessness, and Cupertino click-and-drool reality
distortion fields.  Even as early as 1991 there was an
informal Linux User Group in Finland, although its primary
focus was Linux advocacy and help, not drinking beer and
telling Microsoft jokes as most LUGs do today.

Kernel development continued at a steady clip, with more
and more people joining in and hoping that their patches
would be accepted by the Benevolent Dictator himself. To
have a patch accepted by Linus was like winning the Nobel
Prize (without the prize money, at least), but to face
rejection was like being rejected from Clown College. The
reputation game certainly sparked some arguments and good
old-fashioned flame wars.

One of the most memorable crisis was over the behavior of
the delete and backspace keys -- a legacy problem that
persists to this day just like MS-DOS' 640KB
nobody-will-ever-need-more limit.  A certain faction of
hackers wanted the Backspace key to actually backspace and
the Delete key to actually delete. Linus wasn't too keen on
the proposed changes; "It Works For Me(tm)" is all he said.
Some observers now think Linus was pulling rank to get back
at the unknown hacker who managed to slip a patch by him
that replaced the "Kernel panic" error with "Kernel panic:
Linus probably fscked it all up again".

* Transmeta

That secretive Silicon Valley startup known as Transmeta
is, according to our Vast Spy Network(tm), really a
conspiracy within a conspiracy. "Trans" is a seldom used
slang word in Finnish that means "cover-up", so the name
Transmeta is literally "meta-cover-up".  Or at least that's
what our Chief Linguist tells us, although he's been wrong
about such things before ("Windows" is not really an old
Native American word for "gullible white man staring on to
hourglass" as he previously claimed).

On the surface, Transmeta was a startup that hired Linus
Torvalds in 1996 as their Alpha Geek to help develop some
kind of microprocessor. Linus, everyone found out later,
was actually hired as part of a low-budget yet high-yield
publicity stunt. While other dotcoms were burning millions
on glitzy marketing campaigns nobody remembers and
Superbowl ads displayed while jocks went to the bathroom,
Transmeta was spending only pocket change on marketing.
Most of that pocket change went towards hosting the
Transmeta website (the one that wasn't there yet) which,
incidentally, contained more original content and received
more visitors than the typical dotcom portal. 

Microsoft relies on vaporware and certain *ahem* stipends
given to journalists in order to generate buzz and hype for
new products, but Transmeta only needed Non-Disclosure
Agreements and  the Personality Cult of Linus to build up
its buzz. When the secret was finally unveiled, the
Slashdot crowd was all excited about low-power mobile
processors and code-morphing algorithms -- for a couple
days. Then everyone yawned and went back to playing Quake.
It's still not entirely clear when Transmeta is actually
supposed to start selling something.

But does Transmeta intend to sell anything? Long-time
Humorix readers know the answer: Transmeta is really a
front for an illegal Finnback smuggling operation, while
also acting as the US branch of the sinister Helsinkian
Underground. It's all a meta-conspiracy.  We here at
Humorix have found that our readers are getting a little
sick of far-fetched conspiracy theories, so we'll move on
now.

* Meanwhile, back in Redmond

Microsoft's position as the 5,000 pound gorilla of the
computer industry didn't change during the 1990's. Indeed,
this gorilla got even more bloated with every passing
Windows release. Microsoft's continued success prompted
countless MBAs and PHBs to shell out megabucks for
content-free books hoping to learn Bill Gates' secrets. As
the Alpha Marketer, Bill Gates could spin flaws into gold,
but he really had no secret. His business strategy was
simplicity itself:

1. Pre-announce vaporous product.
2. Hire monkeys (low-paid temps) to cruft something
   together in Visual Basic.
3. It it compiles, ship it.
4. Launch marketing campaign for new product and remind
   peons just how innovative Microsoft is.
5. Repeat.

With such a plan Microsoft couldn't fail. That is, unless
some external force popped up and ruined everything. Such
as Linux and the Internet perhaps. Both of these
developments were well-known to Bill Gates in the early and
mid 1990's (a company as large as Microsoft can afford a
decent spy network, after all). He just considered both to
be mere fads that would go away when Microsoft announced
some new innovation, like PDAs -- Personal Desktop Agents
(i.e. Bob and Clippit).

Chairman Bill explained in an internal memo (don't ask how
we obtained this document), "Linux and the Internet are
both non-profit anarchies dominated by kids. Real people --
in other words, people with money -- aren't going to mess
with these things. Users don't want anarchies, they want
pre-digested content and controlled environments. They want
Windows and the Microsoft Network experience."

* Free, Open, Libre, Whatever Software

Eric S. Raymond's now famous paper, "The Cathedral and the
Bazaar", set the stage for the lucrative business of giving
software away. In CatB, ESR likened the software industry
to an anarchistic bazaar, with each vendor looking out for
himself, trying to hoodwink customers and fellow vendors. 
The produce vendor (i.e. Apple), for instance, felt no need
to cooperate with the crystal-ball seller (Oracle) or the
con artist hocking miracle drugs (Microsoft).  Each kept
their property and trade secrets to themselves, hoping to
gain an edge and make money fast.  "With enough eyeballs,
all bug-ridden software programs are marketable," ESR
observed.

ESR contrasted the "caveat emptor" Bazaar to an idealistic
Cathedral model used by free software developers.  European
cathedrals of medieval days were built block-by-block with
extensive volunteer manpower from the surrounding
community.  Such projects were "open" in the sense that
everybody could see their progress, and interested people
could wander inside and offer comments or praise about
construction methods.  "Those medieval cathedrals are still
standing," ESR mused.  "But bazaars built in the 14th
Century are long gone, a victim of their inferior nature.
Of course, the same fate will hold true for proprietary
software."

CatB is credited by many (especially ESR himself) as the
primary reason Netscape announced January 22, 1998 the
release of the Mozilla source code. In addition, Rob Malda
of Slashdot has also received praise for the decision
because he published an editorial ("Give us the damn source
code so we can fix all of Netscape's annoying problems
ourselves!") about the subject a few weeks earlier.

Of course, historians now know the true reason behind the
landmark decision: Netscape engineers were scared to death
that a large multi-national corporation would acquire them
and crush Mozilla.  Which indeed did happen much later,
although everybody thought the conqueror would be
Microsoft, not AOL (America's Online Lusers).

The Netscape announcement prompted a strategy session among
Linux bigwigs on February 3rd to find ways to sell the
concept of Cathedral-style development to businesses and
venture capitalists.  They decided a new term to replace
the confusing 'free software' was needed; some rejected
suggestions included "Free Source", "Ajar Source", "World
Domination Source", "bong-ware" (Bong's Obviously Not GNU),
and "Nude Source".  We can thank Chris Peterson for coining
"Open Source", which became the adopted term and later
sparked the ugly "Free Software vs. Open Source", "Raymond
vs. Stallman" flame-a-thons that persist to this day.

* Not the end

We're not finished with this Brief History of Linux quite
yet. Check back eventually for the next installment, in
which we make up some more stuff about the founding of
Slashdot, the Linux Gold Rush, and the continued journey
towards that state-of-mind known as World Domination.

To be continued...

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