Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Forking

Author:David Adams
Posted:8/24/2000; 9:06:35 PM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:20149 (In response to 20121)
Prev/Next:20148 / 20150

There are more than 50 distributions of Linux

Two things about this. First, the reason there are so many is because Linux has become so popular, and people are attempting to make money off the phenomenon. Secondly, I don't believe this forking is encouraged by the GPL. The Linux kernel hasn't meaningfully forked at all (I'm not sure if anyone has started their own forks other than people trying to port to PalmOS or 8086s). For all intents and purposes, there is only one Linux kernel. That same kernel is included in all of these distributions.

What you are calling "Linux," is in fact a whole collection of disparate software packages, each with their own configuration options. A variety of companies and groups (Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Slackware) have all come up with different ways to put all that software together into a usable product. Those different packaging strategies are the reason there are a variety of "incompatible" Linux distributions, not forking due to restrictions of the GPL.

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