Linux, open source, and software's future

Developed by Torvalds in 1991 from Minix, a simplified version of Unix intended for educational use, Linux has grown from a mere 10000-line kernel to a full-featured OS with more than 1.5 million lines of code. Once thought the exclusive province of hobbyists, students, and hard-core programmers, Linux has quietly, unassumingly slipped into the software mainstream. The paper discusses the advantages of Linux and considers massively parallel software development. It also discusses open source development.