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The Past, Present, and Future of OSS
CowboyNeal writes "The nature of the open source movement and its software over the years has changed considerably. From its humble beginnings in the early 80s to mainstream Android adoption, open source software along with computers and technology as a whole has gone from the sidelines to a prevalent position in the lives of modern consumers." Read below for the rest of what CowboyNeal has to say.
The open source movement that we know today has its roots in both academia and hobbyists dating back to the late 1970s and early 1980s. Before even the founding of the FSF, public domain software was available in abundance. Software packages of all sorts were freely given away or sold for the cost of copying them. It's important to note that a given piece of public domain software may or may not have come with its source code, so while it was free in the cost sense, it wasn't yet strictly free in the freedom sense. The early versions of Bell Labs Unix included the source code, which users could use to modify and extend the OS. In 1978, Bill Joy, then a graduate student at Berkeley, released the first Berkeley Software Distribution, or BSD. Rather than a complete OS, BSD was an add-on to V6 Unix. BSD would grow over the years that followed to become a nearly complete operating system. In 1983, Richard Stallman at MIT began the GNU project, to develop a free software version of Unix. By 1985, the GNU version of Emacs had its first release, and in 1987, the GNU C Compiler would follow. As parts of a possible GNU system began to coalesce, soon all that was missing was a kernel.
Both BSD and the GNU project would continue on through the early 1990s, when new catalysts for change were introduced. The release of a new BSD aimed at desktop and consumer hardware, 386BSD, was held up in courts by AT&T. Also around this time a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds, would release his first operating system kernel called Linux, in 1991. By 1992, Linux would adopt the GNU Public License, and be distributed with the userland that GNU had built. Since the GNU system was nearly complete but lacked a kernel, it was a natural pairing. Also in 1992, the BSD legal case would finally be resolved, and the parts of BSD that weren't written by AT&T were released to the public, and while it was short-lived, it became the basis for NetBSD and FreeBSD, and other BSD-based operating systems. Though In 1993, an event far bigger than just the world of software hackers took place. For the first time, private individuals could acquire access to the Internet. No longer did someone have to be affiliated with a government or educational institution to get onto the Internet. This rapid influx of enthusiasts provided new manpower for both Linux and BSD projects.
In 1995, the Apache Project would make its first release, based on the source code of NCSA HTTPd, which was nearly ubiquitous as the web server used to power the Internet. Over the years, the NCSA code would be slowly rewritten, and Apache would take over NCSA HTTPd's position as the predominant web server.
By 1998, the open source movement had rapidly grown, but hadn't yet been named as such. In early 1998, Netscape announced that they would release the source code for their flagship product, Navigator. In response to this as well as the growing popularity of Linux and BSD operating systems, the term "open source" was coined and later the Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond. The OSI was founded as an organization for education and advocacy, and was inclusive of GPL, BSD, and other "open source compatible" licensed software, such as the Apache Web Server and XFree86 windowing system.
From here it seemed that the sky was the limit for open source software. Over the next few years, Linux would become the de facto server software for many organizations. While desktop market share eluded Linux outside of the hobbyist and enthusiast circles, its place in the data center would be securely cemented. In 2003, a then-little-known-of company called Android, Inc. was formed and began working on software for mobile phones. Before releasing anything, they were acquired by Google in 2005 and set to work on a mobile device platform powered by Linux. In 2007, Google and many other hardware and software companies announced the Open Handset Alliance, and unveiled the Android operating system, which was built on the Linux kernel. A year later in 2008, the first Android device would ship, and by 2010, Google would begin selling their own phones, after partnering with other manufacturers.
By 2008, another odd turn of events would happen. Microsoft was long an enemy of open source and free software, seeing them as potential competitors to its proprietary systems. Soon even the giant of the proprietary software world, would begin to utilize open source software licenses. Microsoft would go so far as to use open source software as part of Windows Azure, and eventually even donate code to the Samba project.
While Linux hasn't taken over desktops in droves here in the states, the same can't be said overseas. Traffic estimates to SourceForge consistently place domestic traffic in only the 15-20% range, meaning that anywhere from 80-85% of the downloads are going overseas, where open source is an easier sell, given the prohibitive cost of a proprietary operating system. However, given the lack of actual sales figures, it's difficult to pin down how widespread open software usage actually is. One place that Linux has won big stateside, in the form of Android, is the mobile phone market, where Android now powers 52% of the smartphones domestically, and 68% of the smartphones in the entire world. 2012 saw another milestone for Linux, when Red Hat, Inc. became the first Linux company to boast of a billion dollars of revenue within a single fiscal year.
It's still difficult to predict what the future holds for open source software. With the advent of programs such as One Laptop per Child (OLPC), which has put Linux-based laptops into the hands of nearly 2 million children, a new generation of children are being raised on open source software overseas. Government adoption of open source software is as it is in other sectors, where Linux has a foothold on the server, but hasn't made significant strides into end user territory yet. That looks to be changing somewhat, with recent movements in Jordan and France, but the change is still slow in happening.
Both BSD and the GNU project would continue on through the early 1990s, when new catalysts for change were introduced. The release of a new BSD aimed at desktop and consumer hardware, 386BSD, was held up in courts by AT&T. Also around this time a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds, would release his first operating system kernel called Linux, in 1991. By 1992, Linux would adopt the GNU Public License, and be distributed with the userland that GNU had built. Since the GNU system was nearly complete but lacked a kernel, it was a natural pairing. Also in 1992, the BSD legal case would finally be resolved, and the parts of BSD that weren't written by AT&T were released to the public, and while it was short-lived, it became the basis for NetBSD and FreeBSD, and other BSD-based operating systems. Though In 1993, an event far bigger than just the world of software hackers took place. For the first time, private individuals could acquire access to the Internet. No longer did someone have to be affiliated with a government or educational institution to get onto the Internet. This rapid influx of enthusiasts provided new manpower for both Linux and BSD projects.
In 1995, the Apache Project would make its first release, based on the source code of NCSA HTTPd, which was nearly ubiquitous as the web server used to power the Internet. Over the years, the NCSA code would be slowly rewritten, and Apache would take over NCSA HTTPd's position as the predominant web server.
By 1998, the open source movement had rapidly grown, but hadn't yet been named as such. In early 1998, Netscape announced that they would release the source code for their flagship product, Navigator. In response to this as well as the growing popularity of Linux and BSD operating systems, the term "open source" was coined and later the Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond. The OSI was founded as an organization for education and advocacy, and was inclusive of GPL, BSD, and other "open source compatible" licensed software, such as the Apache Web Server and XFree86 windowing system.
From here it seemed that the sky was the limit for open source software. Over the next few years, Linux would become the de facto server software for many organizations. While desktop market share eluded Linux outside of the hobbyist and enthusiast circles, its place in the data center would be securely cemented. In 2003, a then-little-known-of company called Android, Inc. was formed and began working on software for mobile phones. Before releasing anything, they were acquired by Google in 2005 and set to work on a mobile device platform powered by Linux. In 2007, Google and many other hardware and software companies announced the Open Handset Alliance, and unveiled the Android operating system, which was built on the Linux kernel. A year later in 2008, the first Android device would ship, and by 2010, Google would begin selling their own phones, after partnering with other manufacturers.
By 2008, another odd turn of events would happen. Microsoft was long an enemy of open source and free software, seeing them as potential competitors to its proprietary systems. Soon even the giant of the proprietary software world, would begin to utilize open source software licenses. Microsoft would go so far as to use open source software as part of Windows Azure, and eventually even donate code to the Samba project.
While Linux hasn't taken over desktops in droves here in the states, the same can't be said overseas. Traffic estimates to SourceForge consistently place domestic traffic in only the 15-20% range, meaning that anywhere from 80-85% of the downloads are going overseas, where open source is an easier sell, given the prohibitive cost of a proprietary operating system. However, given the lack of actual sales figures, it's difficult to pin down how widespread open software usage actually is. One place that Linux has won big stateside, in the form of Android, is the mobile phone market, where Android now powers 52% of the smartphones domestically, and 68% of the smartphones in the entire world. 2012 saw another milestone for Linux, when Red Hat, Inc. became the first Linux company to boast of a billion dollars of revenue within a single fiscal year.
It's still difficult to predict what the future holds for open source software. With the advent of programs such as One Laptop per Child (OLPC), which has put Linux-based laptops into the hands of nearly 2 million children, a new generation of children are being raised on open source software overseas. Government adoption of open source software is as it is in other sectors, where Linux has a foothold on the server, but hasn't made significant strides into end user territory yet. That looks to be changing somewhat, with recent movements in Jordan and France, but the change is still slow in happening.
It's heavy on positive spin, but as lacking in authenticity as a corporate press release.
Hey guys did you hear? 2013 will finally be the year of linux desktop!
When all others fail, CowboyNeal.
Err,
Much as you're entitled to your opinion, you aren't entitled to your own facts. The issue is: -
You just made up that statement. Right?
I guess you geeks haven't been paying attention ...
From the '70s to 1995 it was The Impossible Dream. A small band of dreamers nominally led by Richard Stallman, up against corporate goliaths like Microsoft and IBM. Can you possibly imagine such a world? The theme song would've been "Imagine" by John Lennon.
After Netscape Navigator exploded on the scene in 1995 and introduced the masses to the WWW, leveraging the exponential growth of telecom bandwidth exploiting optical fiber, it became Inevitable. That's because the staff at Microsoft, IBM, AOL, Netscape, and other tech companies couldn't pivot fast enough to meet the explosion in demand for technological change. The situation was ripe for freeware that could be modified and extended by tech-savvy customers, and for emerging standards to be crafted from the bottom up, rather from the usual consortium of a handful of giant tech companies eager to maintain their respective customer bases.
I stopped reading after the open source movement starting in the 80s part. Either the writer doesn't know the difference between free software and open source software, or they are off by a few decades.
.
Could Cowboy Neal answer why he's missing from the polls? Anyway, about the future of OSS, OSS as a paradigm will continue to exist. Open source as "existing available source code, available openly" existed pre-GNU, pre-Stallman. There is so much conflation of free software, open source, OSS, and GNU licensing that even this summary article had a few swings and misses.
It's possible for people to be a powerset (2**{whatever number of options}) of all of these different overlapping and some mutually-exclusive definitions of open source software (lowercase, like lowercase god). That would be a good poll: open source software to me means:... x, y, z, Cowboy Neal.
The most important change is the maturation of open source developers and open source development.
Use of the viral and restrictive GPL is falling dramatically and truly free licensing like BSD is on the rise. Fading away are the days of the open source world being dominated by 15 years screaming about 'possibly GPL violation!!!' on Slashdot.
Everywhere that open source is succeeding is thanks to BSD licensed software:
* BSD based Chrome over the GPL based Mozilla
* Partially BSD based OS X on the desktop over the clusterfuck of GPL Linux desktops
* BSD based(outside the kernel) Android dominating the cellphone market over the effectively dead GPL based Linux cellphone efforts
We're already witnessing the twilight of the entire F/OSS movement, unless people wake up and realize that all the gains of the last few decades will be lost if
* first to file supersedes first to invent
* free access to computing hardware is circumvented by cryptography
* cloud computing services, built on free software, because they aren't distributing binary code, aren't bound to abide by the same ethical obligations as traditional software vendors.
The forces allied against F/OSS are legion, and powerful. They will do their damnedest to bury F/OSS, because it threatens their survival. F/OSS advocates often act as if their their own survival is a given. Nothing can stop the tide. Think again. Who's fighting the good fight? Richard. What does he get for his pains? He's the constant butt of jokes around here.
As with most things in life, you'll reap what you sow. If you don't give a shit, fine, live in ignorance and let other people dictate the conditions of your life. If you do care, then get off your ass and wake the fuck up. You are losing.
Total Linux implementations dwarf Windows. Android + other embedded Linux + servers and other infrastructure exist in huge numbers. The desktop is nowhere near the majority of installed os.
And yet odds are you posted that with a browser based on an open source engine. On a website that uses open source software. Your connection to the internet most likely depends on an open source stack. Most smart phones are based on open source software. If you use GPS... well you get the idea.
But is the software really better and did inovation come there first? Funny that he mentions Android with its share of "copy what the other guys have already done" + "typical performance issues -- why do i have a laggy UI with 4 cores..."
For a short time, after Compaq reversed engineered the IBM BIOS and cheap components because available, it was cheap to buidl your own, but that was only because the markup on IBM and Compaq machines were very high and MS liscensing was very liberal. But you still had limited hardware. When MS cracked down on licensing, charging huge prices for single purchases, and subsidizing the OEM machine in exchange for exclusivity, that time ended.
Which is to say we are not going to see a fully open source desktop anytime soon. Consumers want a unified experience that can only come form a corporate design. That is MS, Apple, Google. Users expect the hardware to be subsidized, and is not going to pay the full price up front for a sophisticated piece of hardware. This was the problem with the original mac and newton. The hardware was expensive, almost no one had a GPU, not that sophisticated a BIOS, but was too expensive.
That said, increasing parts of the OS an user experience are open source. Of course MS has little OSS in it's operating system, and that may leave a path open for some entrepreneur to create a MS compatible system with an OSS core. Of course since people who use MS products think everything should be free, it seems that as soon as an OSS core is out there, there will be few takers to pay for it since MS is 'free' with purchase of a computer.
Which leves that application and utility software. OSS has had an effect we see on software prices. OSS software is available and widely used by those that don't get MS for free through corporate or pirate channels. In fact, IMHO, the best way to push OSS is to let the anti-pirated software people win. If software piracy is really no longer possible, then MS is either going to have to cave in pricing, or face the fate of DVD, Bluray and Blockbuster.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Desktops I've worked with for the last 15 years has been all open source.
From managing supercomputers, network management, and administrative systems.
All were open source.
This is a good compilation of what otherwise was scattered data, and at a level of complexity that people can read quickly to grasp the history of Open Source software.
I wish it had included one major source of free 1980s software, which was software written in BASIC and/or "poke assembler" (DATA statements from BASIC that were POKEd into the memory of your A2+ or C64). Much of this was designed to hack: war dialers, exchange hackers, copy programs, deprotectors, compressors, etc.
While that may be a bit distracting as the uses were illegal, it's important to remember that at this time, finding software was difficult and with computers costing the equivalent of $5000 today, it was very hard to afford or find software. "Sharing" was how you explored the world.
I wish machines had a universal language today, as the BASIC/assembler mix was back then. The closest I've found is Perl.
Futurist Traditionalism
Probability of failure: I like the idea of OSS but if one thinks of it as a software development approach/methodology/philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, and would look at the big picture of success and failure cases one would have to draw a pretty bleak conclusion. It does not seem to work very well on average! Yes, every proponent of OSS will produce a nice list of some impressive OSS projects and certainly Android could be considered THE poster child of OSS. But for each successful OSS project there are 10,000 dead or semi dead ones. Imagine any other field with these odds. Imagine for instance bridge design. If only one out of 10,000 bridges designed and implemented would be actually used or usable, that would be terrible.
Innovation: Also, take that 10 most successful OSS project list and remove all the items that are OSS projects that are highly inspired by non OSS products predating them (e.g., Lunix/Unix, Gimp/Photoshop, OpenOffice/Office, Android/iOS, ... ). I am not necessarily against these kinds of projects but it is really hard to consider them innovative. Now what are you left with? The answer is not much.
As an approach OSS has not worked well on average and nothing has really changed over the years. There is no real trend here. The fact that there are some, very few, truly successful, OSS projects now could simple be the result of the fact that there are just MORE OSS projects. In other words, the average chance of an OSS to have really impact has not improved at all. This is simply a number game with no qualitative shift of any kind. Also, lets not kid ourselves. Most end users really care about the FREE part of FOSS and not the fact that they could access or change the source. They want Foss not fOSS.
Are the successful projects successful because of OSS or in spite of it? The answer to that is less clear that is should be. As a user, for instance, I may or may not like Linux for desktop. The fact that it is free is completely irrelevant to me because I value my time. If Windows or OSX works more efficiently for me just a little bit I will not hesitate one second to buy either one. However, and more importantly, as a developer, the idea of developing a product for an OS that already is a niche product (which would be ok) but then split into however many distros makes Linux a non starter. I have no interest nor the capacity to track all these versions. The more conceptual question is if there is an intrinsic force to OSS that makes it more likely to fork into different versions compared to their commercial versions. As far as I can tell the answer is yes. For developers and end users this is ultimately not a great thing. Even OSS projects with good control, e.g., Android, are becoming fragmented in ways that are gradually turning into a problem for developers and ultimately for end users.
"open source software along with computers and technology as a whole has gone from the sidelines to a prevalent position in the lives of modern consumers."
And stupid me though that the final goal of open source were to empower us by making us more than mere consumer. I tough that open source was about making us freeer human beings.
... that Linux (cloud) and Linux (Android) and BSD (Apple) made the stand-alone Desktop obsolete.
Slashdot jumped the shark tonight
Consumers want a unified experience that can only come form a corporate design. That is MS, Apple, Google. Users expect the hardware to be subsidized, and is not going to pay the full price up front for a sophisticated piece of hardware.
Canonical and Red Hat aren't corporations? Ubuntu pretty much installed itself on my laptop. Also, how is hardware subsidized?
The issue is that it is not really economical to put together a computer from scratch, adding OS later, even if the OS if basically free.
Sure it is - either you spend less, or you get more computing power for your same amount of $. And, if you can build, then just slowing upgrading parts as they die or become too slow/small for your needs.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Software was routinely distributed in source form by user groups for particular machine system way back in the 60's, when I started computing. No one complained if someone took some of that software and improved and changed it.
It was like the garden of Eden before the Fall, which happened when people started selling software instead of giving it away.
The FOSS licences became necessary after that.
-- hendrik
Given the list of companies, I suspect the GP is referring to smartphone (and related) "subsidies" by ISPs, which are really loans with the payments hidden in the monthly service fee.
I'm not sure what the GP meant by "unified experience"... one of the things that bothers me when I use Windows is the lack of a unified experience that I am used to on Linux because in proprietary systems every group that implements some functionality wants to be visible so to get a complete product you often need multiple plugins which all want to make sure you know you are using them.
I can't tell if you're confusing PCs with phones, confusing hardware with software, trolling, or just high. There's just too many non sequiturs to be able to tell.
PC hardware isn't subsidised. (A discount on Windows is not a hardware subsidy.)
I've been running an OSS desktop or laptop almost exclusively for the last 7+ years.
It's been close to ten years since I've encountered a PC that I couldn't install Linux on.
I'm not running OSS because I didn't build my laptop from parts? WTF?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Past = Toilet
Present = Toilet
Future = Toilet
are u friends with " girlintraining" ?
just curious
See also: http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/index.html ..."
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/neuvm.pdf
"The most important thing that IBM did to us was the announcement on February 8, 1983, of the Object Code Only (OCO) policy. I fear that ten years from now another speaker will be standing here telling you that that was the day VM died, but I hope not.
Since that day in 1983, the community has devoted enormous effort to attempting to convince IBM’s management that the OCO decision was a mistake. Many, many people have contributed to this effort in SHARE and in the other user groups. The greatest of SHARE’s source heroes is unquestionably Gabe Goldberg, who has persevered and maintained hope and a sense of humor in the face of IBM’s seemingly implacable position. In SEAS, Hans Deckers has been a particularly hard worker in the battle against OCO, and Sverre Jarp, the SEAS Past President, also deserves much praise for his role.
In February, 1985, the SHARE VM Group presented IBM with a White Paper that concluded with the sentence, “We hope that IBM will decide not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.” Though we had tried to make our White Paper reasonable and business-like, IBM chose not to reply to it.
A few months after the announcement of the OCO policy, IBM released the first OCO version of VM, VM/PC. VM/PC had a number of problems, including poor performance and incorrect or missing or incompatible function. Without source, the users were unable to correct or compensate for these problems, so nobody was surprised when VM/PC fell flat.
(Is that a picture of me talking to Kirk Alexander in front of an SGI Iris in the iCGL running some windowing and 3D model creation software I wrote? Not sure... Might be someone else and different software. What an amazing community back then and there -- one I did not appreciate enough at the time and just took for granted in my youth and lack of experience.)
A key point made in Melinda Varian's history of the VM Community is that even though only a small percentage of users actually looked at and changed the source code (an argument IBM made as to why providing the source did not matter), those users were a very impotent driver of fixes and innovation. When I was contracting at IBM Research around 2000, there were IBMers still angry about that decision two decades earlier and how it went badly for IBM, and they helped create some of the pressure for IBM to support the Free and Open Source Software movement. I pushed to get Python formally approved for official use in IBM Research back then, which took a bit of doing to go through IBM Legal. They even (embarrassingly) wrote Guido to ask him if he really had written it.
And:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=437640&cid=22255952
http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2010/06/artificial-scarcity-altair-basic-and.html
"Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?
Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong."
The web with plain-text distribution of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which are often readable, have been a bit of a return to those earlier days when you often had to type in BAS
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Not really related to TFA, but:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ap-poll-majority-of-americans-still-express-negative-view-of-blacks/2012/10/27/421d683a-2009-11e2-8817-41b9a7aaabc7_story.html
The free and open source software world becomes more business oriented. This among other facts implies 1) more businesses/companies involvement; 2) adoption of permissive licenses (e.g. MIT License, Apache License) and hence integration of free software with proprietary counterparts; and 3) loosely-woven P2P software engineering practices. While the hobbyist and enthusiast culture of development will continue to exist, it is going to be controlled by companies and organizations.
"The issue is that it is not really economical to put together a computer from scratch, adding OS later, even if the OS if basically free".
...
The OEMs get huge discounts compared to the smaller box assemblers. Microsoft also gets to 'certify' the hawdware that it'll allow Windows to run on. This is equivilent to BP certifying what cars can be built and run on the (BP?) highways.
"For a short time, after Compaq reversed engineered the IBM BIOS and cheap components because available, it was cheap to buidl your own, but that was only because the markup on IBM and Compaq machines were very high and MS liscensing was very liberal".
Purely as an accident of history, IBM neglected to get an exclusive license for DOS so when later on Columbia Data Products were the first to clean-room the BIOS, Microsoft were more than willing to license DOS to third party companies like Compaq. "Which is to say we are not going to see a fully open source desktop anytime soon. Consumers want a unified experience that can only come form a corporate design"
Because MS leans on the OEMS to not put one out, they are only allowed to sell servers or hide the desktop version on their website
Best Linux distro 2012
AccountKiller
.
actively blocking users from running modified software on its hardware by design
Smart TVs, BD players, Kobos, EReaders..other than Ipads, and the list goes on. On a Samsung TV the gnu licence is available through the remote for heavens sake.
The people who sell the products do not even know that the firm ware is largely based upon OSS...by and large they haven't got a clue about what busy-box and the Linux kernel really is. OSS has succeeded whether or not Ubuntu and other distros will survive is another story all together.
Time to through a bone to Patrick and his crowd. Help create a killer OSS desktop os that is rock solid on all platforms. Patrick was right to not copy the route of Ubuntu and others that would try to bling up everything like Mac OS and Windows with 3d garbage and eye candy.
KISS multi tasking and lightning fast is the ticket. Graphics available for programs that can do all that but not on the friggin' ui home screen!
No flipping tiled icons, transitional fade outs, rotating screen and other gimics. Just lightning fast access to functions and programs.
I do think your history is a bit dodgy. However, I'm not sure I agree with your main point. We do have open source desktops. Even ignoring the underlying operating system there are dozens of combinations of window manager and desktop environment to choose from. And I'm nor convinced that people do want the kind of unification you mention. Speaking personally, back in 1992 I first found Unix to be a bit terrifying after previously using aos/vs. It was inconsistent and seemed primitive by comparison. What it took was a change of mindset. 20 years later and a dozen different Unix implementations on , I really couldn't imagine going back. Sure, I can see the benefit of that old o/s but I get so much more out of unix , especially Linux. The chief benefit came from Unix having open standards. Linux and so much open source s/w has taken this the next step.
Google is more evil than Microsoft ever was.
No one anticipated walled gardens being built from open source, or licenses in the 80s and 90s would have prevented them. Apple, Google, Amazon, and others have exploited open source to create walled gardens that deny the essential freedoms that open source is meant to preserve.
There's also Chromium and ChromiumOS, AOSP, VP8, V8...
Isn't it obvious that desktop computing will fade away in the consumer market? Within time, only professionals will need desktop workstations, and the common consumer will overwhelmingly choose touch-based devices. Think about what the common consumer actually does with a desktop computer. Not much that can't be done with a tablet, right?
The "year of the linux desktop" would have been nice, but it's not the end of the world. After all, open source software dominates the server, embedded, and supercomputer markets. Is that not something to be proud of?
Which is to say we are not going to see a fully open source desktop anytime soon. Consumers want a unified experience that can only come form a corporate design. That is MS, Apple, Google. Users expect the hardware to be subsidized, and is not going to pay the full price up front for a sophisticated piece of hardware. This was the problem with the original mac and newton. The hardware was expensive, almost no one had a GPU, not that sophisticated a BIOS, but was too expensive.
Speaking for myself, I've been running mainly-open-source desktops since 1999 (BSD 4.2, which was not entirely open source at the time, running Tom's Window Manager), and entirely-open-source desktops since 1993 (Linux 0.99pl11, also running TWM). There was a dreadfully crude graphical shell for DOS back in those days called 'Windows', but you couldn't really do anything useful with it. Over the intervening years Windows has improved, and now the Windows desktop is nearly as productive as contemporary Linux desktops... but I've never seen any compelling reason to switch.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Your earliest date for open source is not right. In the 1960s I used a product called SSP (Scientific Subroutine Package) which was free open source software made available by users through IBM. It is great software written in FORTRAN and I still use parts of it today.
I couldn't agree with this more.
I just bought a Samsung 'smart' tv. I own a cable hd box. While trying to get things to work I discovered by accident that both of these pieces of equipment have oss pieces, which has led me down a rabbit hole of investigating licenses, checking firmware releases and jailbreaking tutorials.
These boxes should be able to talk to each other. Easily. I can see their ip addresses. I am not an expert but I don't want to have to buy a seperate device for each piece of functionality I'd like.
Making equipment inaccessible by doing end runs around the GPL is just making me want to support the GPL more (and these companies less), but I need more 'middle ground' info from the great people who have provided open software.
i.e. it is disheartening that slashdot spends more time debating licenses these days than tech, but it has become nescessary. I'd like to see more discussions about how to enable the equipment we own. I didn't even appreciate that this is what jailbreaking is. I think.
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html
* Some "Food 4 Thought", and coding...
APK
P.S.=> Those are some fairly LARGE reasons WHY Linux is having a rough time overtaking Windows (and MacOS X) on the desktop...
... apk
Just a thought. Could the reason for valve making a native linux client be a low-profile way to gradually enter the android platform? How much linux is android from a game standpoint? Either that, or they are contemplating a linux console.
Or perhaps just that given that people with linux hasn't paid $300 for their operating system, perhaps they instead can put some money on a game?
Anyway. It is a kind of interesting process: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/
Baboons are cute.
People were sharing source before the internet:
SHARE for IBM mainframe users (1955) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_(computing)
DECUS for Digital Equipment users (1961) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECUS
There was also IBM 'Type III' code developed by IBM employees, but not sold or maintained (1961?) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Type-III_Library
There were probably others.
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If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on your internet connection forever.
> Read below for the rest of what CowboyNeal has to say
No thanks.
See for yourself.
Free Martian Whores!
What AC meant is that it's shocking that the poster still has enough brain cells to keep their lungs pumping.
Damn that's some sad reading... and probably more or less true for other western countries as well (not saying only western).
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.