On Mon, 18 Nov 2002 10:20, you wrote: > > well i stirred something up when I referred to Linus as "aka god" :-) > > (note the lowercase "g"). > > Since I was one who jumped, I thought I'd follow up. > > Let's assume Linux didn't exist. What would we have? A properly working HURD, and quite possibly be better off for it.
> No Linux, but quite > possibly still a FreeBSD. And we would quite likely still have all of > KDE/Gnome/Gnu tools, and not really notice the difference in our day-to-day > computing. I think so, in all probability. > But what if the GPL didn't exist? BSD and X would still be there, but would > all our favourite free tools exist? What GUI's would we have? Would Linus > have been able to create Linux? Of course, but whether it would have taken off in the way that it has is anybody's guess. _If_ ( little word with lots of meaning ) it had been illegal to publish software under a GPL type of licence, I expect that it -- Linux -- would be very widely used in fully commercial products in much the same way as Apple has subsumed FreeBSD, and Microsoft much of the netwoking code which is freely available to it. > Under what license? Goodness only knows. -- Sincerely etc., Christopher Sawtell
