Re: Linux?s Remarkable Journey From One Dev's Hobby To 40 Million Lines Of Code - And Counting

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 3 Jul 2025 01:36:35 -0000 (UTC), John McCue wrote:
 

Interesting there is no mention of the BSD/AT&T lawsuit around 1992.
That slowed down *BSD growth at a critical time period.  Even Linus
mentioned this as a reason for starting Linux.

 
Linux had to face its own well-funded lawsuit from SCO (aided and abetted
behind the scenes by other parties, very likely including Microsoft). That
went on for much longer, being pursued by some stubborn group that would
not accept ?case dismissed? for an answer.
 
But that didn?t slow down Linux, did it?

There is no comparison between the BSD and Linux Lawsuit.
    * Linux vs SCO was really SCO vs IBM, IBM a very rich and
      large company, SCO a company on the verge of chapter 11.
      In 2002, Linux already owned the free market.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes
    * BSD lawsuit was AT&T (USL) vs BSDI, a very large company
      against a small company at a critical time when people were
      looking for a cheap/free full featured UN*X.

No mention of the 1 Billion USD investment IBM made in Linux in
1999/2000, that allowed many people to get paid for their work.  *BSD
had and still has nothing close to this.

 
How much does Windows get per year? That billion one-off is probably
peanuts compared to what is spent by Apple and Microsoft on their own
proprietary platforms on a yearly basis.

The 1B USD from IBM put Linux on Large Corporation's Radar.
Without out that, it is quite possible M/S would own the
server space.

 

Something to say about this, *BSDs at the time was known for their
infighting and was less welcoming (IIRC).  Now of course I think it is
the opposite.  I think *BSD are very welcoming to contributors.

 
But they still remain fragmented. Consider how the 300-odd Linux distros
offer a greater variety of application scenarios, and less fragmentation,
whereas just a half-dozen or so BSD variants manage quite the opposite:
greater fragmentation, less variety of application scenarios.

--
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