Andrew Tanenbaum On Minix, Linux, BSD, and Licensing

An anonymous reader points out an interesting, detailed interview with Andrew Tanenbaum at Linuxfr.org; Tanenbaum holds forth on the current state of MINIX, licensing decisions, and the real reason he believes that Linux caught on just when he "thought BSD was going to take over the world." ("I think Linux succeeded against BSD, which was a stable mature system at the time simply because BSDI got stuck in a lawsuit and was effectively stopped for several years.")

This is getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

I've thought they've ended this flame war several years ago?
Well then, here we go, let the flaming commence...

Tanenbaum?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Tanenbaum was the name of a German Christmas carol (sung to the tune of "The Red Flag')

Re:Frozen, I tells you

[drinkypoo]

He comes off as a super-asshole in general. "I published a paper in 1978 on something very close to the Java Virtual Machine, but we never got much credit for it although we were years ahead of Sun. Such is life sometimes." Too bad it was just a paper. But the truth is that Smalltalk is the language which actually existed which deserves the credit that Java got technically, but it also went nowhere because it was neither packaged more marketed attractively. The state of documentation for Squeak is distressing. So, Java it is!

Tanenbaum is clearly grumpy about continually being asked questions about why Linux ate Minix's lunch, and he's very defensive of his stupid license choices which have kept Minix an "also-ran". Maybe if they couldn't get a rise out of him, people would stop asking him about it. As long as he says stupid quotable things about Linux the questions will keep coming.

Re:Frozen, I tells you

[mmcuh]

Any non-trivial software is sueable.

I have

[koinu]

I started on Linux, too (about 1997). And one time (in 1998), I've been talking with a colleague about licenses. I told him, I really don't care if someone uses my code, I just don't want to get sued, if they use it wrong. He told me that I might be more compatible with the "BSD philosophy" instead of GNU's GPL. And he was correct. I informed myself about it and landed on FreeBSD (in 2001), because of the fantastic application support ("FreeBSD ports collection").

Now, I'm trying to use Linux from time to time (almost every year I try it), but it has nothing to offer for me and it lacks some basic features that are included in FreeBSD and which I really need.

Re:Frozen, I tells you

[symbolset]

You know, back then when you asked about a Unix license the reply was something like "well let's fly a consultant out to you to right-size your licensing to optimize your ROI". That may have been a wee bit off-putting for folks who just wanted to do a few spreadsheets for their small business.

Re:Frozen, I tells you

[DrVxD]

It was not meant to be a sueable system.

Is that a Freudian typo?

Re:This is getting old

[nomadic]

Of course it couldn't been forked, do you know how restrictive the BSD license is compared to the GPL??