The Linux maintainer and developer thinks that Mavericks has no impact on Linux

Oct 24, 2013 08:17 GMT  ·  By

During the LinuxCon + CloudOpen Europe 2013 conference in Edinburgh, Linus Torvalds explained why the release of OS X Mavericks as free was completely irrelevant for the Linux environment.

In case you didn't know, Apple has chosen to release the new OS X Mavericks as a free upgrade for all Apple users. One of the participants in the LinuxCon conference asked Linus about the impact of such a free OS on the Linux ecosystem.

“One of the reasons I use the term open source and not free software is because one is purely political and the other one is that in the English language people get confused about the free word,” said Linus Torvalds.

“The fact the Apple gives their OS away is completely irrelevant, plus you actually pay for it in the hardware. It's not like it was expensive. I don't think that impact Linux at all,” concluded Linus.

Being a free upgrade means that you can't actually download it unless you already have a Mac system, and it's not open source, so people can't really fiddle with it.