Linux: An Achievement of Community

In the earliest days of widespread computer use, most systems operated on a multi-user basis, meaning that each computer often had dozens if not hundreds of seperate computer "accounts" which afforded users the abiliy to use, and most importantly, to share the various resources of a large and powerful computer system. Since at the time, access to a "personal" computer was rare, this gave a substantial number of people the ability to use applications they would otherwise have to do without.

Applications available on multi-user systems often included things like compilers, graphics interfaces, help files, e-mail, networking and a variety of extraordinarily simple yet useful utilities like "grep," which allowed users to search the text of computer files for a given keyword. The current analogue of grep is a multi-billion dollar company known as Google.

Almost all of these systems ran an operating system known as UNIX, invented at Bell Labs in the late 1960s. UNIX changed the history of both application and operating system development, and continues to influence tehcnology today. UNIX is based on a number of very simple technological and philosophical concepts, such as "everything is a file," and the sharing of system resources.

Users and programmers on these systems, provided with technology that both enabled and encouraged collaboration and sharing, naturally began to work together on their projects, leveraging the combined knowledge of the community to solve problems. As this process became more popular, many found that the "reinvention of the wheel" happened less and less often, freeing time and resources to advance and innovate.

It is only fitting that the concept of "programming as community" became the driving force behind the most current version of the operating system that originally encouraged it. It is a technology that quite literally runs most of the Internet, and has been the platform of choice for the further development of vitally important utilities without which over half of the world wide web would not exist. It is an operating system known as Linux.

Linux was invented by a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds. It was originally intended as a free clone of Multics, a system which influenced much of the development of UNIX. The difference between the two was the fact Linux was able to take advantage of the worldwide communications technology of the Internet.

Linux was picked up by programmers all over the world and the improvements began. Networking was added, and improved. Compilers were re-compiled. Driviers for all manner of hardware peripherals were written. Browsers, graphical interfaces, shells, word processors, help files, manual pages, web development utilities, games and graphics processors were both written from scratch and ported from other systems. In a space of only a few years, hundreds upon hudreds of useful applications in dozens of different categories became available. The spped and scope of the development effort was phenomenal, and accelerating.

Commercial enterprises like Red Hat sprang up to package Linux commercially. Products known as distributions, which often included as many as ten CD-ROMs, became availabe right alongside other packaged software at retail stores. The feature lists on these distributions were dizzying. Eight browsers, five word processors, two dozen different desktop managers, and ten programming languages? All included? Wait, Linux also includes SQL databases, web servers, a firewall, a file server and an e-mail server too? Fifty games? 15 text editors?

Yeah, and you could give it away to your friends too.

Linux was made available under a license called the GNU Public License, sometimes referred to as a "copyleft." What the license said was simple: you can share anything licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL) with one condition: you can't restrict what others do with it. Essentially the GPL used basic copyright to enforce the same community sharing pioneered by multi-user systems like UNIX.

In the frantic commercial environment of early Internet-dom, giving away any technology was a spectacular concept. This only added to the array of amusing ironies around early Internet-dom. Those who were most amazed at the idea that technology wasn't being surrounded by a fortress of patents, trademarks and copyrights from the moment it was invented were, for the most part, harvesting as much benefit as they possibly could from the Internet, a system based almost entirely on open standards and with far more in common with Linux than any commercial product.

Because of the share-and-share-alike philosophy of the community development that made the rapid improvement of Linux possible, after only a few years, th esystem had grown to the point where it had become part of the product offerings of some of the largest technology companies like IBM. Linux drivers for the newest hardware became more common than uncommon. Many web hosting comapnies started to offer LInux web servers to their customers. Such servers included applications like the Apache web server, the Sendmail e-mail server and the MySQL database.

Even desktop users found Linux to be a powerful alternative. The XFree86 graphical interface gave Linux an appearance similar to other commercial operating systems. Almost immediately, the Netscape and later Mozilla browsers became available, along with seemingly dozens of others, like Lynx, a text-only web browser. Linux had a free Photoshop-like program called GIMP, and a free office suite called OpenOffice, which included a word processor and a spreadsheet.

Linux on the desktop had some unique abilities too. Many of the desktop management systems allowed Linux users to customize their desktops to the point of astonishing users of other systems. Circular windows, transparent terminal interfaces and extraordinarily capable application "docks" containing colorful program icons were available to those who took the time to figure out how to configure the myriad parameters. Some users were having so much fun customizing their desktop they managed to get little work done, but most of them didn't care.

What users found when they began to work with Linux was that the power at their disposal was far beyond what they had become accustomed to, provided they took the time to learn and understand it. What influenced them more, however, was the goodwill associated with the community. Become a Linux user, the community said, and you can share in all we have built, provided you are willing to share what you build as well.

This is not to say that Linux has no commercial potential. Despite the fact Linux is available virtually free, many companies have earned substantial revenue and built substantial businesses selling both Linux software and services for the system. The added value is again the community, where the combined knowledge of programmers worldwide can become a phenomenally important source of information as users make use of LInux to build new projects.

Now, many years after Linux first became available, it continues to grow and spread its message of goodwill. Commercial products like the Apple Macintosh and Mac OS X are now based on UNIX-type systems and both incorporate and are compatible with open projects like Linux. Linux servers can be found across the Internet, being utilized for e-mail, databases, and web pages.

Linux has become a product of and a symbol for the philosophy of the multi-user system: a philosophy of shared knowledge and shared advancement, with the benefits available to all. It is as if anyone who uses it is simply one more user in the largest multi-user computer system ever invented, and part of a community that has produced and benefitted from a most remarkable and influential achievement.