"Another Unix" What Is That?

Phillip Greenspun points to this Infoworld article in which Jaron Lanier referred to Linux as “another Unix”.

“Here we have this wonderful opportunity of creativity in the open source movement,” but programmers built another Unix instead, he said. “What is this?” Lanier asked.

It’s an interesting combination of creativity, lawsuits and open source politics, is what it is.

Linux was started because Linus was frustrated with hacking on Minix.

Linux became the focus of open source developers, the world over, because there was no reasonable alternative; in the early nineties, BSD was buried in a cloud of legal uncertainty, and GNU/Hurd, although long-promised, wasn’t a viable option.

By the time BSD was free of its lawsuit, and had worked out its internal politics, Linux was well on its way to being the leading open source operating system.

It’s reasonable to lament that open source didn’t produce something more adventurous, or more elegant, or more user-friendly, or whatever it is you think an operating system should be. But lamentations won’t contribute to the common good in the way that Linux has.