Torvalds: GPLv2 'A Big Part' of Why Linux Spread, Companies Getting Involved 'Hugely Important'

Five years ago Linus Torvalds commemorated Linux's 25th anniversary in an interview with ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. Now that Linux is celebrating its 30th birthday, Vaughan-Nichols interviewed Torvalds again, who makes an important philosophical point: Trying to look at the bigger picture, Torvalds now thinks the period in early 1992 — when Linux switched to using the Gnu Public License version 2 (GPLv2) — was especially important. He recalls, "It wasn't the original license, but I'm convinced it's a big part of why Linux became so widespread. Not everybody loves the GPL, and I've had my own issues with the FSF [Free Software Foundation], but I do think the GPLv2 has been a huge deal, and people shouldn't dismiss the licensing issues." He adds: "I think the companies getting involved has been hugely important — and that may sound so obvious as to be trite and stupid, but some corners of the open-source community have been fairly negative to any commercial involvement." Torvalds points out that from its earliest days Linux has experienced "fairly continual" interest from major companies. The interview also revisits Linux's version control systems and the name Torvalds had originally chosen for the operating system back in 1991. ("Freax," for "Free Unix.") But 10 years ago, the same reporter got a surprise when he'd asked Torvalds where he thought Linux would be on its 40th birthday. Torvalds' answer? "Bah. I don't plan that far ahead. I can barely keep my calendar for the next week in mind. I really have no idea." So this week Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols instead asked Torvalds how he's envisioning his own future: Looking ahead, Torvalds sees himself keeping on. "I'm 51 years young, I enjoy what I'm doing. What would I do if I didn't do Linux? Puttering around in the garden? Not bloody likely. Slashdot reader juul_advocate shares some context. Torvalds was also contacted by IT Wire to get his thoughts on the 30th birthday of Linux. "There's literally a few people who are still active and around that got involved in '91..." Torvalds told them: "I like having been around for that long, and it's also nice how many other people have actually been around for almost that long... "But I just don't have anything new to say about it, I'm afraid. And while today is an anniversary date, it's not even the only one. This was the anniversary of the first public announcement, but it wasn't actually the actual first code drop. That came later — 17 September. "And even that second anniversary isn't the 'last' anniversary, because the Linux 0.01 code drop on 17 September was only privately announced to people who had shown some interest from the first announcement. "So the first actually public and real *announced* code drop was 5 October 1991, which is when 0.02 was dropped. So I actually have three anniversaries, and they are all equally valid in my mind."

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