Z:gnu-www-ja-gnu-linux-faq--141b47-Linus Torvalds was partly infl/en

Linus Torvalds was partly influenced by a speech about GNU in Finland in 1990. It's possible that even without this influence he might have written a Unix-like kernel, but it probably would not have been free software. Linux became free in 1992 when Linus rereleased it under the GNU GPL. (See the release notes for version 0.12.)