What if he didn't go open source?
What if he had founded his own company and created his own O.S. from the kernel he made at 21yo?
Would he be as rich as Bill Gates?
Would Microsoft have had real competition in the late 90s and early 2000s if Linux was closed-source maintained by accountable professionals?
>>54588250
Most of the software the Linux kernel utilizes was not written by Torvalds, so he would be nowhere without the open source community.
>>54588279
/thread
It would have never advanced beyond being a basement OS only used by Linus and hes nerd friends
No because GNU Linux is shit
It's like cooking soup. Stallman provided the bowl, linus provided the fire. Everyone else provided all the other ingredients to make the soup edible.
>>54588279
the strength of microsoft is that not only them but most tech companies build software for their system.
and linux surely had the talent to keep going until being able to hire employees.
Then we'd be using one of the BSDs probably and Linux if it even still exists at this point would be like the BSDs are today or like HURD
>>54588250
everyone would use BSD, there is nothing special about Linux, its just another *nix
>>54588457
how do you explain OS X then?
>>54588389
It's more like linux provided a bowl, fire, and some broth, stallman provided the potatoes, and then everyone else contributed while stallman insisted that it was potato soup first and foremost
>>54588488
explain what? the thread is about what operating systems would be used if Torvalds didnt open source Linux, OSX doesnt qualify
>>54588488
jobs forked BSD into nextstep. it was a huge success. then he joined apple, threw their shit OS out the window, and reskinned nextstep. but he still had apple's old incompetent programmers so nextstep got progressively worse until it became el capitan.
BSD was completely usable like 20 years before the first release of the Linux kernel and GNU. The AT&T lawsuit and the Linux kernel actually probably set us back like a decade or so because everything had to be moved over and devs had to bring the kernel up to par with other OSes.
>>54588571
And now we have not GNU/Linux, but the freedesktop operating system, FDOS, of which GNU and Linux are core components.
then I guess the GNU Hurd would be done and used as a good daily driver, it was scraped because Linux existed
>>54588250
Look up minix
>>54588677
>GNU software
>good
the only redeeming quality of a linux distro is the software that isn't GNU/crap anon. everything GNU has ever done, someone else has done better, and not GPL3+'d.
>>54588699
>what is GCC
>what is GRUB
>what is GIMP (GNOME was made by GNU)
>what is GPG
>>54588699
What are some open source alternatives to krita and blender that are better?
>>54588688
At that time MINIX was strictly meant for educational purposes, Tanenbaum didn't want it to become too complex where it couldn't be taught in a classroom. Unfortunately MINIX was never going to be as popular as GNU/Linux or BSD
>>54588732
none, both are incredible
>>54588723
>GCC
Worse than clang
>GRUB
Slow, and nearly an OS at this point. The BIOS or UEFI remains the best bootloader. You only need ext/syslinux or lilo to make changing out stock distkernels easier than booting straight linux (possible, but a PITA).
>GIMP
Garbage compared to krita
>GPG
A clone of PGP, and probably one of the few things GNU ever did right because they got people outside the GNU/club to work on it.
>>54588741
Oh also the license meant it couldn't be freely distributed though the source code was available to those that bought it.
>>54588755
what about GDB
>>54588755
krita's gpl
>>54588775
LLDB.
>llvm/clang/lldb are younger than the 30 year old ganoo clusterfuck and already surpassing it
>>54588250
If he added a fruit symbol to it and focused on esthetics yes it would be very popular among consumers.
No. Linux wasn't particularly very good when Linus created it. The only reason why it ended up successful was because of the effort put into it by many different programmers, both hobbyists and professionals (being paid by their employers to work on the Linux kernel) alike. The Linux kernel of today looks little like the original Linux kernel when Linus created it, and his best contributions now are arguably as a filter to keep really shitty code out of the kernel. His main job these days is not really writing Linux, but making the final decisions of which commits get put into Linux, and which do not.
If Linus decided that he would make a closed source kernel instead of an open source kernel, a different *nix would have taken off, likely FreeBSD.
Nah, he wouldn't be rich.
BSD is a thing.
Hurd would have gotten finished and everyone would call it GNU.
>>54588879
He did write git though so his work is still influencing large parts of the kernel just in a different way.
>>54588250
He wouldn't stay afloat because linux codebase is bigger shit than Ganges and new delhi streets combined
>>54588393
Bill Gates was vetted into the inner circles of American power long before he became a billionaire. Linus is an abrasive Finnish geek.
