The Mirror Universe Linux

It's not everyday you learn that your employer could be part of a massive 20-year old conspiracy of "IT systems monopolists" to keep Microsoft from stealing their mojo.

Well, shoot. This never came up at the company picnic. (Awk-ward...)

This theorem was put forth yesterday by analyst Dennis Byron, who was responding to a comment made former hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde as he closed up shop last week; getting out of the hedge fund arena altogether. In that letter, published in the Financial Times, Lahde offered a suggestion for the US government to fix the current economic crisis:

"George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man's interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft's near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken..."

Now, I am sure that there are many who would (and will) argue for and against this point based on its political and business merits. But regardless of who you feel about this idea of Lahde's, I am not sure the correct response is to try to reinvent the history of Linux in order to break down the basic premise of this suggestion.

Yet, that seems to be Byron's tactic. Ladhe's idea is clearly stupid, Byron, is arguing, because Ladhe doesn't really know the true secret history of Linux. But hey, Byron is here to school us in the truth:

"Linux was created by IBM, HP (HPQ) and other former IT systems monopolists that realized that Microsoft was taking their systems monopoly away from them. IBM, HP, Digital Equipment (now part of HP), etc. had banded together for this purpose in the early 1980s while Linus Torvalds, the nominal creator of Linux and who now works for one of the groups IBM, HP, etc. put together for its trust-like purposes, was still in short pants. Ten years later, the consortium chose a small piece of software code, 'forked' by Linus from some other code while he was in college, to complement the still ongoing technical development effort by IBM, HP, etc. to come up with 'one Unix.' What is today called Linux is the result of that one-Unix effort..."

Which translates (I think) to this: IBM, DEC, HP, and other companies put together the real technical underpinnings of what would become Linux in an effort to save their own collective bacons. Once Linus Torvalds came along with his really cool software that happened to fit well with their ongoing efforts, they co-opted the project by putting money and effort into Linux, using it as a perfect covert instrument to combat Microsoft. They even founded the very Linux Foundation that Linus works for.

In a word, Mr. Byron, no.

In several dozen words, that theory is full of so many holes, it's too easy to blow apart. But, it's a Monday, so I'll take the gimme.

First off, IBM didn't put their eggs in the Linux basket until 2000, fully nine years after the introduction of Linux. It was only soon thereafter that other vendors started joining in. (Though, I admit, there was some early efforts in Linux from HP, I believe just prior to that.) So, if your theory is correct, why did this consortium wait nine years after the advent of Linux to start contributing to it openly? And, if I read your article right, it was actually 19 years, because ten years of development occured before Linux was made by Linus... while he was still in "short pants."

So, I ask you, given the big inroads into the server space that Windows NT was making prior to the year 2000, what exactly was this black-helicopter consortium waiting for? Vista?

Secondly, this whole notion that a consortium came up with the technology behind Linux then used Linux as a front to promote the destruction of Microsoft is really quite silly, for one huge reason:

The GPL.

Given the business and intelleactual property climate in the early 90s (or early 80s, depending on how paranoid you want the theory to be), what major "IT systems monopolist," desperate to come up with a way to get their business back from Microsoft, would pick an operating system kernel licensed with the GPL as a covert front? While I in no way think that IBM, HP, and the rest of this alleged cabal haven't been good GPL citizens since their entry into Linux and open source, I think it's an impossible stretch that they would conspire together and build a GPL'd operating system from scratch.

Do these companies support Linux through a secret consortium now? Yes, they do, though you can leave off the "secret." The Linux Foundation has the unabashed mission to promote Linux however possible, and we make no apologies for it. HP, IBM, Dell, and all of the other systems vendors in our membership didn't create Linux secretly. They publically began to support Linux after it was built by a Finnish computer science student.

These companies, and all the rest of the corporations and people who have supported Linux in some fashion, came on board after the fact for one reason only:

They knew a good thing when they saw it.

Thus endeth the history lesson.