Programming languages and software engineering - The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution - page 74

In 1991, he made the source code of his new operating system, called Linux
( Fig. 4.11 ), available on the Internet with the following announcement:

I'm working on a free version of a Minix look-alike for AT-386 computers. It
has finally reached the stage where it's even usable (though it may not be,
depending on what you want), and I am willing to put out the sources for
wider distribution. . . . This is a program for hackers by a hacker. I've enjoyed
doing it, and somebody might enjoy looking at it and even modifying it for
their own needs. It is still small enough to understand, use and modify, and
I'm looking forward to any comments you might have. I'm also interested in
hearing from anybody who has written any of the utilities/library functions
for Minix. If your efforts are freely distributable (under copyright or even
public domain) I'd like to hear from you so I can add them to the system. 21

Fig. 4.11. Linux celebrates twenty years
with release 3.0. Tux is the official mas-
cot of the Linux community. According
to legend, Torvalds was looking for
something fun and sympathetic to
associate with Linux, and a slightly fat
penguin sitting down after having had a
great meal perfectly fit the bill.

Torvalds was surprised by the response to his invitation from the worldwide
Unix community. Within a couple of years, hundreds of developers had joined
his Internet newsgroup and were contributing bug fixes, improvements, and
new features to Linux. By 1994, Torvalds was able to release the first complete
version of his operating system, Linux version 1.0. This listed nearly eighty
developers as contributors, from a dozen different countries. From these mod-
est beginnings, Linux has become much more than a hobbyist's PC operating
system. By 1999, Red Hat and VA Linux were established as public companies
offering “Linux support” - although the basic code was still freely available.
By 2000, Linux had received official recognition from IBM, which announced
it would offer enterprise support for Red Hat Linux on their mainframe com-
puters. Major software companies such as Oracle Corporation and SAP soon
followed, and by 2013 Linux had become established as a major component of
both university and business software environments.
Who are the developers who contribute to Linux? One recent study found
that there were more software developers from industry than from universities
and research organizations. It is also probably true that, over the last decade
or so, several hundred professional software engineers from companies like
IBM and Intel have participated in major open-source projects. Another survey
found that 10 percent of the developers are credited on more than 70 percent
of the code. In his topic The Success of Open Source , Steven Weber concludes:

B.4.10. Linus Torvalds is credited with the development and maintenance of the Linux kernel,
which has become the basis for most popular open-source operating systems. In the programmer
community he is considered as a “benevolent dictator” who makes sure that the released code is
always in perfect shape. Despite the fact that it took him eight years to get his master's degree at
the University of Helsinki, he turned out to be a very successful programmer. He described the
development of the Linux kernel in a topic Just for Fun . Most of his concern is not the technical
side of Linux but the software patents that are notoriously difficult to deal with.