History
Originally written by Bruce Perens in 1995 and declared complete for his intended usage in 1996, BusyBox's original purpose was to put a complete bootable system on a single floppy that would be both a rescue disk and an installer for the Debian distribution. Since that time it has been extended to become the de facto standard core userspace toolset for embedded Linux devices and Linux distribution installers. Since each Linux executable requires several kilobytes of overhead, having the BusyBox program combine over two hundred programs together often saves substantial disk space and system memory.
BusyBox was maintained by Enrique Zanardi and focused on the needs of the Debian boot-floppies installer system until early 1998, when it was taken over by Dave Cinege for The Linux Router Project (LRP). Cinege made several additions, created a modularized build environment, and shifted BusyBox's focus into general high level embedded systems. As LRP development slowed down in 1999, Erik Andersen, then of Lineo, Inc., took over the project and was the official maintainer between December 1999 and March 2006. During this time the Linux embedded marketplace exploded in growth, and BusyBox matured greatly, expanding both its user base and functionality. Rob Landley became the maintainer in 2005 and continued for several years.
Denys Vlasenko is the current maintainer of BusyBox, as of May 2012.
Read more about this topic: BusyBox
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