 Our story begins 20 years ago. Boris Yeltsin was sworn into office. Jay Leno replaced Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. And cell phones were really, really big. It was August of 1991, and a 20-year-old computer science student named Lena Storvaltz sat down at his computer in Helsinki to post what is now one of the most famous entries in computing history. Hello everybody out there. I'm doing a free operating system. Just a hobby won't be anything big and professional like GNU. It probably will never support anything other than AT hard disks, as that's all I have. A word of Linux open-source project quickly spread around the globe, and developers from all over contributed their code. Linus named his OS kernel Linux and chose a penguin as its mascot after a little incident at the zoo. He soon made a very important decision that would shape Linux's future just as much as the technology. He chose the GPL license created by a visionary named Richard Stallman. The Linux kernel, along with the GPL license and other GNU components, revolutionized the computing industry with a few very simple yet very important freedoms. The freedom to use the software for any purpose. The freedom to change the software to suit your needs. The freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors. And the freedom to share the changes you make. These radical ideas fueled its spread around the world, while in somewhat paradoxically its rise from a hobbyist experiment to the foundation of a large and thriving commercial ecosystem, companies built businesses around Linux. In 1999, Red Hat stock tripled as it became the first Linux company to go public. That same year IBM spent a billion dollars to improve and advertise Linux. Do you have a name? Soon, Linux was knocking out industry heavyweights and fueling the rise of the internet with its free software. In short, Linux revolutionized computing. But whenever something is this disruptive, there's bound to be competitive crossfire. But Linux not only survived, it thrived. Today, the kernel development community numbers in the thousands with hundreds of companies collaborating on Linux development. Every three months, another version of Linux is released. So where is Linux today? Running in 75% of stock exchanges worldwide and powering the servers that deliver Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Google. You use Linux literally every time you surf the internet. It's in your phone, in your TV, running 95% of supercomputers and in many of the devices you use every day. Linux is everywhere. And the Helsinki-based programmer who started it all? He orchestrates this worldwide army of developers from his home office in Portland, Oregon as a fellow at the Linux Foundation. As we celebrate 20 years of Linux, we can all see ourselves in its story. Thank you for being a part of its first 20 years.