Published at LXer:

Early Linux hackers were motivated by a desire to build a Unix-like operating system that would run on personal computers and not cost money. They were not worried about the sharing principles of open source programming.

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I guess I object to this paragraph:
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To understand the impetus behind Linux when Torvalds wrote the first version of it in 1991, it's necessary to grasp the concerns of programmers and computer-science students of the time. Back then, Unix was the operating system of choice for most of these people. It was what they knew best, and it provided a lot more programming power than the dumbed-down, consumer-oriented platforms (of which MS-DOS, the progenitor of Microsoft Windows, proved the most enduring) that emerged with the personal-computing revolution.
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Other operating systems "of choice" during this period (70s and 80s):

DECSystem 10/20 OS; PDP-11 RT11 and RSX11 OS's; DEC Vax VMS; CDC 6000/7000 60-bit OS's; CrayOS for Cray XMP/YMP hardware; various IBM mainframe OS's

As for Unix, no mention is made of BSD, which was developed in an academic environment as an alternative to System V (AT&T Unix). BSD was a popular alternative to VMS for the very popular DEC Vax cluster hardware. BSD proprietary Unix systems were particularly responsible for the great growth of Unix in academia, where VAX hardware was very much in use. PCs became affordable and fairly powerful about the same time as companies like DEC and CDC were on the decline, and hence there was a motivation for developing a PC compatible Unix-like OS as an alternative to DOS/Windows. The demise of DEC after the marketing failure of the Alpha chip in the mid- to late-90s brought the Unix-like systems (and Windows) to the fore.

The article is nowhere near as good as it looks. It has a total of one actual citation. I counted.

All of the "early Linux hackers" are still available for comment. Someone writing a good article about what these people were thinking at the time would have contacted them.

You're right - most of the computer folks, of which I am one, from those days are still around, but retired or just tired. Revisionist history really bothers me. I guess this guy means well, but he's cutting corners that should not be cut.

Cheerio.

Great to know of differences by old peoples.