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TL;DR
'Just a hobby, won't be big': 10,000 lines (1991) → 40 million (2024), 4,800+ contributors coordinating via stigmergy.
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The original announcement that launched stigmergic software development at global scale—demonstrating how indirect coordination through artifacts (code, patches, bug reports) can achieve what no central planning could: 40 million lines of code maintained by thousands of independent contributors.
Key Findings from Torvalds (1991)
- Torvalds announced Linux on August 25, 1991 as 'just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu'
- Version 0.01 contained ~10,000 lines of code; the kernel now exceeds 40 million lines
- In 2024, ~4,807 developers contributed; top corporate contributors: Intel (13.1%), Red Hat (7.2%), Linaro (5.6%), IBM (4.1%)
- No central roadmap or resource allocation—'resources are all owned by the various corporations who use and contribute'
- The name 'Linux' was chosen by Ari Lemke; Torvalds preferred 'Freax'
- Development uses two-week merge windows where patches accumulate and reach threshold for release
- Linux now powers most internet servers, 3 billion Android devices, and the world's fastest supercomputers