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Richard Stallman was born
GNU founder and advocate for open source software is born -
Linus Torvald was born
Creator of the Linux kernel was born -
Richard Stallman begins working at Massachusetts Institute (MIT) of Technology
As a freshman in Harvard, Stallman begins working at MIT in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory -
Stallman graduates at Harvard University
Richard Stallman graduates at Harvard University with a degree in physics -
The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976
This act caused many hackers at the time to break apart as manufacturers stropped sharing source code for software, this did not please Richard Stallman -
Linus begins to program at age ten
Begins to learn how to program on his grandfathers Commodore VIC-20 -
Stallman begins the GNU (GNU's Not Unix) project
The GNU Project was Stallman's response to software becoming proprietary due to copyright law, intended to become a free version of UNIX -
Richard Stallman leaves MIT
Richard Stallman leaves MIT due to changes of the university's copyright rules -
Free Software Foundation
Richard Stallman establishes the Free Software Foundation to promote the idea that software should be open-source and to support the GNU project -
Linus Torvald begins college at University of Helsinki
Linus Torvalds starts college pursuing a degree in computer science -
The first version of the GNU General Public License (GPL) released
Stallman establishes a copyright license that ensures the freedoms associated with open-source software -
Richard Stallman receives a MacArthur fellowship award
The award included a financial stipend which helped Stallman develop various utilities for the GNU project. Only thing missing now is a kernel to achieve a fully functioning operating system... -
Linus' hobby project...
Linus announces in a 'UseNet' post on August 25, similar to online discussion boards that we use today, that he is working on an operating system similar to MINIX. He asks the community about what they like/dislike about MINIX for feedback on features to implement as he based it off MINIX. The first version of this operating system now called "Linux" was released on September 17 and the source code was made available for other developers to experiment with and contribute to the project -
Linux integrates with GNU
Previously released under Linus' his own license, Linux was now relicensed and integrated with GNU. This now allowed for anyone to freely use and modify the source code, attracting a much larger community. This paved the way for what would later become one of the most important operating systems in the world -
Linux iconic 'tux' mascot created with the release of 2.0
Linux's official mascot created by Larry Ewing -
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Linux and the present
Now in the present and with over 600 distributions available, Linux now thrives in enterprise servers, supercomputing, cloud infrastructure, mobile devices with Android and embedded systems. What started off as a hobby project and the efforts of Richard Stallman and his philosophy of what open source software should be, would later than completely revolutionize the tech industry and it wouldn't be where its at currently if it wasn't for the creation and later development of Linux -
Linux Kernel 2.6 released
Generally regarded as one of the most profound Linux versions. It marked a significant leap forward in technical capabilities as it allowed for support of Multi Processor Systems (SMP). Linux could now efficiently run on these types of systems, massively improving performance on large enterprise servers and data centers, paving the way for Linux's dominance in cloud infrastructure in the future