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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] NonDerivative NonCommercial Licenses
  • Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:00:44 -0600

drew Roberts wrote:

On Tuesday 28 March 2006 12:00 am, Greg London wrote:

Linux started out with some political motivation
of "Putting Microsoft out of business", but for
it to survive in the long run, thankfully the
GNU-GPL license was chosen, so that when the
political motivation went away, the project was still
empowered to succeed as as possible.

where are you getting this history of Linux from?


Don't know, but it's pretty clearly false. Linux started in (IIRC) 1991, which means Windows 3.1 was the current Microsoft flagship product, and I doubt Linus Torvalds was using it at all. He started creating Linux as a "terminal server" on the Minix platform, according to his own account, and it gradually turned into an operating system built around Minix. Then he eventually turned it into a full O/S, wrote Minix (which was not freely distributable at the time -- I don't know what it's current status is) out of it, and then posted to usenet looking for Posix specs, because he figured he might as well make it conform to the standard (which is a de jure standard based on the de facto standard of Unix).

So, I think as far as Linux Torvalds was concerned, Microsoft wasn't even on his radar. Poltically, Torvalds is pretty moderate -- I don't think he really cares what Microsoft does as long as it doesn't interfere with Linux. I suppose he must have some stake in the competition *now* since he's had the good fortune to be employed full-time on his brainchild, Linux, and would lose some of that status if Linux were to lose its financial importance. But that's very much a 2nd order effect.

Richard Stallman, on the other hand, is clearly a politically-motivated, even radical, individual. But he started the Gnu project in the early 1980s, when even Windows 3.1 was well in the future. The "bad guys" he was concerned about were the commercial Unix vendors (but I think he was more broad-focused than that). Major proprietary software institutions at that time included Sun, IBM, and Apple among others, but Microsoft was a small fry (I actually *liked* Microsoft back then -- they made a nice BASIC interpreter for my TRS-80 Color Computer, which is what I learned to program on). Once again, not even on the radar.

Cheers,
Terry





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