Anyone can use it without charge, on condition that any improvements they make are also uncopyrighted and freely available. The nerds of the world took up Torvalds' challenge. A gain, the contrast with Windows is striking. How that system works is a proprietary Microsoft secret. An operating system is what controls a computer but finding out how it does so is a lot harder than looking at the engine of a car.
Computers translate everything into ones and zeroes.
It is impossible to see what is happening from this digital stream. B ecause the original quantities and instructions that make up Linux have been published, any programmer can see what it is doing, how it does it and, possibly, how it could do it better. Torvalds did not invent the concept of open programming but Linux is its first success story. Indeed, it probably could not have succeeded before the Internet had linked the disparate world of computing experts. I n making Linux an open language, Torvalds gave up the opportunity of growing rich from his work.