Linux kernel an SCM system which satisfied Torvalds' technical requirements. BitKeeper was made available to Linus and several others free of charge but was not free software, which was a source of controversy. The system did provide some interoperability with free SCM systems such as CVS and Subversion. In April 2005, efforts to reverse-engineer the BitKeeper system by Andrew Tridgell led BitMover, the company which maintained BitKeeper, to stop supporting the Linux development community. In response, Torvalds and others wrote a new source code control system for the purpose, called Git. The new system was written within weeks, and in two months
Linux free software. Work began in 1984. Later, in 1985, Stallman started the Free Software Foundation and wrote the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) in 1989. By the early 1990s, many of the programs required in an operating system (such as libraries, compilers, text editors, a Unix shell, and a windowing system) were completed, although low-level elements such as device drivers, daemons, and the kernel, called GNU/Hurd, were stalled and incomplete. Linus Torvalds has stated that if the GNU kernel had been available at the time (1991), he would not have decided to write his own. Although not released until