The Bristol Zoo in England is preparing to place a plaque in honor of Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux OS, by the cage of a Blackfooted Penguin, a group of Linux programmers announced Wednesday. The penguin's sponsorship, paid by the programmers in Torvalds' name, is just one example of how the Linux community has united around its non-commercial OS to honor its own.
"Linus managed to unite a whole bunch of people and to create an OS that has now won an Infoworld award," says Alan Cox, overseer of the Linux TCP/IP code. "He's also somehow managed to stay a normal sane, non-egotistical person in the process. Basically we think he's neat."
Linux was originally created in 1991 by Torvalds, a young engineering student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, as a collective project to create a new, freely distributable OS that could be used in place of the commercially held UNIX system. For the past six years, Torvalds has organized a global group of programmers, linked together by the Internet, who contribute their time to refine the code. An estimated 3 to 4 million users have downloaded the free software from FTP sites, and individual programmers can use the available source code to tailor it to their needs.
Ironically, Torvalds' public domain OS has come under attack from commercial vultures, and he is currently involved in a trademark dispute over the Linux name. Last summer, companies using the word "Linux" in their names received letters from a man named Delle Croce who had registered the name Linux - three years after the OS had been created by Torvalds - and was demanding 10 percent of their revenue. Torvalds and several other plaintiffs are now involved in a trademark dispute that will most likely last several years, and has infuriated the Linux community.
"The Linux people are a very close-knit group and vociferous in promoting the operating system. They're very protective of it," says Gerry Davis of Davis & Schroeder, the law firm that is representing the six plaintiffs for a reduced fee. "I get an email every day from somebody saying 'Thank you for helping us out.'"
Meanwhile, the penguin, which represents the Linux logo, will eat for a year thanks to the Linux community.
