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Williams, Sam

"Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software"

The most
notable exception to this rule comes in Chapter 9 . In
the final part of that chapter, I describe the early
evolution of Linux as an offshoot of Minix. It is safe
to say that during the first two years of the project's
development, the operating system Torvalds and his
colleagues were working on bore little similarity to
the GNU system envisioned by Stallman, even though it
gradually began to share key components, such as the
GNU C Compiler and the GNU Debugger.
This decision further benefits from the fact that,
prior to 1993, Stallman saw little need to insist on credit.
Some might view the decision to use GNU/Linux for later
versions of the same operating system as arbitrary. I
would like to point out that it was in no way a
prerequisite for gaining Stallman's cooperation in the
making of this book. I came to it of my own accord,
partly because of the operating system's modular nature
and the community surrounding it, and partly because of
the apolitical nature of the Linux name.


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