Minimum set of primitives?

[Paul Prescod]

Harvey J. Stein wrote:
> 
> "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".

Linus did not allow things to get into Linux that he thought violated
his design principles. IOW, he kept control. If someone had suggested
(e.g.) a persistent object store in the kernel, Linus would not have let
it in, because his goal was to copy Unix, not invent something.

 Paul Prescod  - http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

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