[cmbaus]

What political factors are you referring to? I think Linux took off because it was easily accessible and widely available, and Linus made a lot of pragmatic choices.

I remember in the 90s how awesome it seemed to get a *nix system for free with a book.

[cturner]

IBM's investment in Linux was political. For decades, IBM's identity was as a platform company. It was becoming a regular loser outside of its enterprise monopoly. It was late to the party on home computing. It created the PC but still lost control of the platform. It tried to recover with OS/2. It was a pretty good platform but they couldn't get the details right. This was was fizzing as well.

Around 1996 they made a pivot. They invested heavily to recreate themselves as a company who sold services based on Windows NT. This was a desperate move, but it worked - by the late 90s they had reinvented themselves as a services business. One of the stories of the late 90s was the way that IBM had reinvented themselves.

Then, shrewdly, they invested heavily in Linux. At a time, FreeBSD was still a much better platform. But Linux had the GPL behind it. The GPL forces people to release changes. This sabotaged the commercial software market, which IBM had already lost. IBM could continue to charge for services and retain their hardware monopoly. This has hurt competitors who had strong footholds in software but who who were less strong in services (Sun, Oracle).

[AnimalMuppet]

> It tried to recover with OS/2. It was a pretty good platform but they couldn't get the details right. This was was fizzing as well.

Well, it locked up the PS/2 hardware with patents, so nobody could clone it. So non-PS/2 hardware was a lot cheaper, because there were a hundred companies trying to sell it. But that cheaper hardware didn't run OS/2 (at least initially).

But when Microsoft was able to keep pace (more or less) with Windows, nobody wanted the PS/2, because Windows on commodity hardware was good enough, and less expensive.

[cturner]

    > Well, it locked up the PS/2 hardware with patents, so nobody could clone it. 

The "IBM Compatible" was already well-established though. PS2 architecture plays were an attempt for them to get relevant again, and it didn't work. The main technology that they had was EISA, and there wasn't much edge from having that.

    > cheaper hardware didn't run OS/2

I don't think that's quite right. A mate had a PS2 that was bundled with OS/2 4 in 1996. We found that the OS/2 install disks that were bundled with his PS2 wouldn't install to other systems. But I never had trouble getting shrinkwrapped os/2 running on commodity ISA or VESA bus hardware - 2.0, 2.1, 3, 4. I ran it as my main desktop for five years. You did have a poor experience if you didn't have a well-supported video card, and almost nothing was well-supported.

[AnimalMuppet]

I stand corrected.

[cturner]

Had a wake-at-4am. The prop IBM arch wasn't EISA, it was Micro Channel. (thanks)

[mzs]

I cannot speak for anyone else but personally in college I went linux instead of a BSD on my desk cause the whole AT&T law suit was still pretty murky and frightening to me.

[kragen]

Yeah, the political factor was that I didn't know anybody who had a copy of Plan 9 to give me, because Bell Labs had a government-granted monopoly on giving people copies of Plan 9. Meanwhile my uncle was sending me SLS disks...

[jimjimjim]

It was pretty much the focal point and poster child for open source (even before open source was picked up as the phrase to describe the movement). back then it was everybody versus microsoft.