Mako Hill

Linux could easily have never existed.

At the time Linus got started in 1991, *BSD was tied up in a legal dispute (which was not resolved until 1994), and Minix was only available under a restrictive license (Minix was relicensed BSD in 2000)

If either of those legal issues had not existed in 1991, Linus probably would never have started Linux [0], and Linux's place in history would have been assumed by something else – most likely some BSD derivative or a descendant of Minix.

(Minix's microkernel architecture, while elegant, has a performance cost. However, Minix could have easily been hacked into a monolithic kernel, which is basically what Apple did to Mach, and Microsoft did with win32k.sys. Or maybe it could have evolved towards a higher performance microkernel architecture, such as is found in L4)

In terms of the "technology tree", Linux occupies the place of "leading openly developed FLOSS operating system". If Linux hadn't occupied that place, some other system would have instead. And there is a chance even that one day Linux might be dethroned. (Unlikely to happen any time soon, but maybe some decades or centuries from now.)

[0] So says the man himself: "If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html

> CC0 is deprecated by CC themselves

As far as I can tell this is simply false. At https://creativecommons.org/retiredlicenses/ there is a list of "retired" (deprecated) legal tools, which does include a "Public Domain Dedication and Certification" but in the right column says "Replaced by two separate tools: the CC0 Public Domain Dedication and the Public Domain Mark." Furthermore, at the top of the page it says "CC will no longer offer these licenses via its license chooser or other mechanism for any future work" and if you click on the link (https://creativecommons.org/choose/) there is a "Want public domain instead?" link to https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/ which prominently features the CC0 dedication.

So you can see that CC0 is still recommended it and it is in current use. Mike Linksvayer (former VP of Creative Commons) uses and recommends it: http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/11/25/upgrade-to-0/

> CC requested the OSI to not approve it

I actually read through the OSI mailing list thread about the CC0 dedication once, and as far as I recall the OSI people (I think it was Bruce Perens) had reservations and eventually the CC side decided it wasn't worth pursuing, see https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero for the OSI summary.

“Actually, I have never even checked 386BSD out; when I started on Linux it wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state where it was so usable that I never really thought about switching. If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened.“

Linus Torvalds, 1993

https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html

If Linux hadn’t been created, 386BSD and its derivatives would be correspondingly more popular. Or Hurd would have happened. Or both. Maybe BeOS would be a contender amongst commercial OSes.

If Linux hadn’t been created things wouldn’t be that different in all likelihood.

> Would Linux have gained the mind and market share it did or would the BSDs have won?

From the horse's mouth:

> Linus: Actually, I have never even checked 386BSD out; when I started on Linux it wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state where it was so usable that I never really thought about switching. If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened.

- https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html

There's some perspective of Torvalds on 386BSD in this 1993 interview: https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html

Applicable part:

"when I started on Linux it [386BSD] wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state where it was so usable that I never really thought about switching. If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened."

I don't think the lawsuit played an issue.

Putting adverts on the website, apparently. Some projects just fiercely want to stay noncommercial, so they will object at this. I am reminded of a comment from the time when Wikipedia was trying to figure out how to cover their costs: The bigger danger isn't advertisers manipulating content, but that people will no longer see Wikipedia as theirs, they will see it as yet another place that corporations bombard them with adverts. — Sid http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2007/01/02/wikipedia-advertising/#comment-70489