Minimum set of primitives?

[Harvey J. Stein]

kragen@pobox.com (Kragen) writes:

> On Fri, 20 Mar 1998, Paul Prescod wrote:
> > I don't know about the GIMP, but EMACS and Linux were *not* made in this
> > environment. Linux was started by *one man* who kept control over
> > everything (essentially) and started the project using a (relatively)
> > coherent existing design. Emacs is more or less the same. 
> 
> This is also true of the GIMP -- except it was two men instead of one.
> Both of them have now left the project; it stagnated for a few months,
> but now Quartic has pretty much taken over.

"Control" is a strong word.  Linux started as a task switcher.
Versions 0.0* were written by Linus.  When it progressed to where he
thought he had something interesting, he put it up on the net.  It was
still pretty far from a unix kernel.  Many people defected from minix
hacking to contribute huge chunks of code (the networking support, the
ext2fs file system, ...).  I think Linus was pretty open about
accepting such contributions.  I'd consider him more as a "patch
coordinator" than as a head of development who "kept control over
everything".

-- 
Harvey J. Stein
Berger Financial Research
hjstein@bfr.co.il