What's the reason behind Linux being so successful?

[Antti]

There is a Youtube video where Linus introduces Linux 1.0. He speaks Finnish (Swedish subtitles) there and I can translate it into English. It probably is done already somewhere but I do not mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaDpjlFpbfo

About 0:30 Linus starts speaking. Here it is (not word by word):

Linus speaks: Why this kind of Unix system is made at all, especially here at the university? There are some available already, even on PC, but they are very expensive. If you go and buy a DOS, for example, it costs about 200 marks. If you go and buy a Unix for PC, it costs easily 20000 marks. That is a little bit too much for a student. Just go to some local computer store and ask if they can sell you a SCO Unix? They will look at you and say: Oh, hell no! [audience laugh] As a matter of fact, it is easier if you write it by yourself. [audience laugh]


Here is the actual speech precisely (quite informal/relaxed speech), added just for completeness:

Linus puhuu: Miks tämmöstä Unixia ollenkaan tehdään, varsinkaan tämmöisessä yliopistoympäristössä on se, niitä on kyllä on olemassa, PC-koneillekin, mutta niitten hintataso on erittäin korkea. Elikkä, kun esimerkiksi Dossin ostaa kotikoneeseen 200 markalla, niin tommonen Unix kotikoneeseen maksaa helposti 20000 markkaa, mikä on opiskelijalle hiukan liian paljon. Menkää vaikka jonnekin tietokonekauppaan, niin kysykää, onks teillä SCO-Unix, niin ne kattoo teitä, kysyy ja ne sanoo: ei hemmetissä. Itse asiassa, paljon helpompi kirjoittaa se ite.

[bewing]

Wait! Was UNIX free(-ly distributable) at its early stage? Unless had it been so, how could after Ken returning to Bell Labs, UCB people continue working on it?

AT&T owned the copyright and all the rights to UNIX and all its flavors, up until the end of the 80's. But they were relaxed about it. Especially about the concept of having smart people contribute good code to the OS for free. Universities, IBM, Sun, etc all contributed. AT&T sold licenses to computer companies to distribute binary copies of the OS on individual machines (along with enough driver source code to get along), but they weren't fanatical about maintaining absolute secrecy over the source or anything. If a little piracy went on, then that was sad -- but they weren't going to flip their lids about it. The income from UNIX to AT&T was an insignificant portion of their revenue stream.

And then SCO attempted, and mostly but not quite succeeded at buying UNIX from AT&T.

They then sued everybody and his brother who had ever touched the code.

And then they tried to do a fanatical job of making the source completely secret.

And that was the death of SCO and Unix. But it took half a decade to happen, and nobody really wanted to touch anything having to do with UNIX while that was going on.