kem@prl.ufl.edu (Kelly Murray) writes:
quoted text
> I've always been under the impression that a primary goal of Linux was to
> provide a replacement for DOS, NT, and SunOS, etc.

I think you're very, very wrong.  Nothing that Linus has said in
public seems to support this (not even the 300+ line interview I made
with him, for Linux News #3 (I think that's the issue), back in last
fall; that, if any, would have been an appropriate place to state such
a goal).

At most he might have had a temporary secondary goal of providing a
replacement for Minix.  I think he has succeeded in that.

quoted text
>From what I know of Linus, and based on my recollections of
discussions way back when, he never really set out to create a "real"
operating system.  It more or less just happened.  First he wanted to
learn 386 assembler (I seem to remember that the first thing he did
was a strlen :-), then he wanted to try out the protected mode
instructions, and wrote a small scheduler which ran two tasks, each
printing a different character (so you'd get AAABBABBBBAAAABB on the
screen, and could actually see when the task switch took place).  

Some time after that, he had a keyboard driver, a serial driver, a
screen driver with some vt100 emulation (he used his QL to learn all
the funny codes: he had a font that had displayed control characters
as their hexadecimal codes, so it was easy to see exactly what data
came from the serial line).  This was enough to use his computer as a
terminal emulation.

Then he added a floppy driver, a hard disk driver, a filesystem.  Then
he wanted to be able to compile gcc under the rudiments of an
operating system he had.  Some time after that was possible, he
"discussed" things with ast, and became much more determined to beat
Minix.  After he had done that, there was X, then lotsa new features,
then networking, then ...  

Now we have a 0.99pl10.

But I don't think he actually sat down and said "I want to write an
operating system that replaces all other operating systems".

Yo, Linus: care to confirm or correct me?

quoted text
> I would guess most users want it to be.

If so, they are free to attempt it.

quoted text
> If that is not the goal of Linux, would it be so terrible to have a
> company create a proprietary version that attempts to be a stable,
> standard, supported version to encourage ports of commercial
> software, with a real marketing budget to properly go up against the
> big boys.

There is absolutely, postively, no problem whatsoever in a company
creating their own version of Linux, or their own distribution.

If they make it proprietary, then they are doing everything wrong.

quoted text
> Perhaps, but I think the truth is people are afraid that it could
> actually become popular and successful, even more so than the
> original free version, and this would not seem "fair".  So the idea
> is to only allow the original, free version to be successful, or
> nothing at all.

No.  Wrong.  One of the most important points of the GPL is to
encourage people to modify programs, whether it is to fix bugs, to
make new features, or to write something entirely different but use
the existing code.

The other important point of the GPL is that everyone should be free
to do the same to every program.  That's why it is not allowable to
make a program based on a GPL'd program proprietary.

quoted text
> Maybe if people could see more of the failures of software
> companies, they wouldn't be so hostile to the successes.

Maybe if people would see more free software made proprietary, they
wouldn't be so hostile toward the GPL.

I honestly can't understand why there are so many people who seem to
think that it is ok for people to forbid the sharing and modifying of
programs, while they think it is ok for them to take other people's
programs, modify them, and sell them for profig (while forbidding the
sharing and modifying the modified programs).

We have this flame war every now and then.  Some people (they always
look like newcomers to me, but I might be wrong) start complaining
that they can't take Linux and make it into a commercial product.
Other people explain to them that they can do exactly that, as long as
their versions is under the GPL too.  Then they get hot and bothered
and start screaming about evil hackers who are robbing honest
businessmen their chance to become as successful as Bill Gates.  I
never really understood the logic of their argument.  Perhaps I'm
stupid, or perhaps I just can't understand how their greedy little
minds work.

Oh well, who cares.  At least we can have a great time while we
discuss it civilly, throwing "Mr. Flames" at each other.

(BTW, are the businessmen related to the people who go around telling
us that we must do this or that or otherwise Linux will never become
anything?  Siblings?  Cousins?  Just friends?)

--
Lars.Wirzenius@helsinki.fi  (finger wirzeniu@klaava.helsinki.fi)
   MS-DOS, you can't live with it, you can live without it.