EVENT
Welcome to Portland Lunch and the Non-Linux Portability of Git
- Shortly after creating Git in April 2005 to replace BitKeeper for Linux kernel development, Linus Torvalds arrived in Portland, Oregon.
- I had a welcome to Portland lunch with Linus, during which I asked him what new projects he was working on.
- After a characteristically dismissive shrug and "oh, the Linux kernel" comment, Linus shared that he was writing a new distributed source control system because the kernel team had lost their free license for BitKeeper.
- As a prominent non-Linux user running OpenBSD and macOS, I asked, "Does it run on OpenBSD or macOS?"
- Linus replied, "I don't know... why don't you download and try it out?"
- I downloaded the early codebase and immediately began testing and patching, becoming the primary "canary in the coal mine" for the non-Linux portability of Git for its first dozen years of development.
What links here
These facts are as Randal recalls them, but much time has passed for most of this. If you find a factual error, please email realmerlyn@gmail.com.