In that alternative world, there would be nothing today like the GNU/Linux system, and probably no free operating system at all. No one attempted to develop a free operating system in the 1980s except the GNU Project and (later) Berkeley CSRG, which has been specifically asked by the GNU Project to start freeing its code.

Linus Torvalds was partly influenced by a speech about GNU in Finland in 1990. It's possible that even without this INFLUENCE he MIGHT have written a Unix-like kernel, but it probably would not have been free SOFTWARE. Linux BECAME free in 1992 when Linus rereleased it under the GNU GPL. (See the release notes for VERSION 0.12.)

Even if Torvalds had released Linux under some other free software license, a free kernel alone would not have made much difference to the world. The significance of Linux came from fitting into a larger framework, a complete free operating system: GNU/Linux.

In that alternative world, there would be nothing today like the GNU/Linux system, and probably no free operating system at all. No one attempted to develop a free operating system in the 1980s except the GNU Project and (later) Berkeley CSRG, which has been specifically asked by the GNU Project to start freeing its code.

Linus Torvalds was partly influenced by a speech about GNU in Finland in 1990. It's possible that even without this influence he might have written a Unix-like kernel, but it probably would not have been free software. Linux became free in 1992 when Linus rereleased it under the GNU GPL. (See the release notes for version 0.12.)

Even if Torvalds had released Linux under some other free software license, a free kernel alone would not have made much difference to the world. The significance of Linux came from fitting into a larger framework, a complete free operating system: GNU/Linux.