“I must say the Linux community is a lot nicer than the Unix community. A negative comment on Unix would warrant death threats. With Linux, it is like stirring up a nest of butterflies.”

— Ken Thompson

"Ken Thompson clarifies matters", 1999

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Ken Thompson 28

American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating … 1943

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“A lot of other people wanted a free production UNIX with lots of bells and whistles and wanted to convert MINIX into that. I was dragged along in the maelstrom for a while, but when Linux came along, I was actually relieved that I could go back to professoring.”

Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1944) Dutch computer scientist

Ken Brown's Motivation, Release 1.2 http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/followup/.
The "Linux is Obsolete" Debate

“The major things we saw wrong with Unix when we started talking about what would become Plan 9, back around 1985, all stemmed from the appearance of a network. As a stand-alone system, Unix was pretty good. But when you networked Unix machines together, you got a network of stand-alone systems instead of a seamless, integrated networked system. Instead of one big file system, one user community, one secure setup uniting your network of machines, you had a hodgepodge of workarounds to Unix's fundamental design decision that each machine is self-sufficient.”

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004

“The real threat to Linux adoption is Apple, not Microsoft. If you didn’t know, now you know.”

Ryan C. Gordon (1978) Computer programmer

Quoted from, Interview with Icculus http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/icculus LinuxGames (2007-05-13)

“No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

1990s, 1991-94

“I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Internet meme commonly attributed to Stallman made by an unknown source.
Misattributed

Michael Simms (software developer) (1973) Video game programmer

Quoted in "Linux Game Publishing - it's possible" http://mstation.org/linuxgamepublishing.php M station (2003)

“Video games are sexy. People need to be aware that GNU/Linux is more than just something to drive your webservers… A lot of people (myself included) feel that video games are a major factor in getting GNU/Linux to the masses. I can't count the number of people that have said, "Thanks for porting [GAME X]! It was the only reason I kept a Windows partition around!"”

Ryan C. Gordon (1978) Computer programmer

Quoted in Robin Miller, "LinuxWorld Exhibitors' Responses to Slashdot Questions" http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/03/01/27/184257.shtml?tid=106&tid=163 Slashdot (2003-01-27)

“I started keeping a list of these annoyances but it got too long and depressing so I just learned to live with them again. We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.”

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004

“The creative community has a lot more ideas than the executive community feels comfortable with.”

Josh Pate (1970) Screenwriter, director and producer

Source: Surfacing with Josh Pate https://web.archive.org/web/20080409004815/http://www.mania.com:80/surfacing-josh-pate_article_49815.html (October 10, 2005)

“… even if the Hurd didn't depend on Linux code (and as far as I know, it does, but since I think they have their design heads firmly up their *sses anyway with that whole microkernel thing, I've never felt it was worth my time even looking at their code), I don't believe a religiously motivated development community can ever generate as good code except by pure chance.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

LKML, September 27, 2006 http://groups.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/msg/e4617294bbd1d0f1
2000s, 2006

“I must say the Linux community is a lot nicer than the Unix community. A negative comment on Unix would warrant death threats. With Linux, it is like stirring up a nest of butterflies.”

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Ken Thompson 28

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