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History of Open Source
mattyj writes
"Great white paper from netaction.org (another great site) that
outlines the history of open source, how it came to be, why
it almost died, and why it's coming back. Rather lengthy but
it filled in a lot of holes that were missing in my knowledge
base of what OS was/is."
There'd be nothing to read...
Microsoft brought Mac type user interface to PC world. Whatever you say, in 1985-86 MS was not yet powerfull enough to kill all the competition but still, its OS won. It was combination of their software being easy to use ( as compared to competition offerings), technically good enough and superb marketing and business strategy.
Sure spreadsheet was not invented by MS but so what ? Did Ford or Mercedes invented the car ?
I don't find MAC easier than Win machine.
Besides, someone who can't manage anything more literate than "I don't find MAC easier than Win machine." probably doesn't find too much out there that's easy . . .
> ...and for once, [government] stepped out of the way, instead of into the way.
Ironically, it could be argued that one branch of government (the
DOJ) is presently indirectly aiding "open source". To wit: the
government's actions against Microsoft are loosening-up the market.
Allowing VARs and hardware manufacturers to feel a bit "safer" in
supporting alternatives to Microsoft. Alternatives such as Linux.
OTOH, there are those who argue that the government's actions
interfere with the "natural order of things" in free markets.
There was plenty of business open source way back when (starting in the 1950's). SHARE, the IBM mainframe users' group used to pass it out promiscuously.
When IBM had a hardware monopoly, they wrote software, gave it free to those who bought their mainframes, and put much of it into public domain.
The users of the big systems from IBM also had user groups that swapped source code quite generously. This died in the 70's when software became an unbundled business -- to get it you had to both pay and promise not to pass around fixes anymore: the vendors wanted to get paid for those.
The article seemed to pass over all that.
You may be right. I don't recall CP/M being much more than a hobbyist platform, in comparison to the bundled, proprietary operating systems on the mass-market micros (mostly based on the 6502), but would happily be proved wrong by any hard data (can't say I've got any).
At any rate, I may have understated the importance of IBM, but the dominance of Microsoft BASIC on the major American micros of the pre-IBM-PC era does show Microsoft's strategy of bundling its key software with the most popular computer systems was already being practised.
I'm damned if I can tell them apart. I don't trust anything too big and powerful. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
its supposedly some guy at 'slate'.
this OSS author doesnt even give the URL of 'slate' (www.slate.com) which is a minimum for any decent reference.
i have looked through slate.com and it required you to subscribe to get
at any of the links i found (nothing entitled 'microsoft plays dead' by that guy though)
you know, just because you are 'supporting' OSS
doesnt mean i wont say your chapter on linux is
poorly written, poorly referenced, poorly researched,
irresponsible, and full of empty hot air.
if you had the source to command.com you could
.class file" and then
hack up 'binary support' in about 15 minutes.
the only thing 'binary support for java' does is
go "oh, this is a java
types 'java Bleh' into itself just like you would if you were at the keyboard
so basically it winds up saving you 5 keystrokes.
WOOPTY DO SHIT.
linux is becoming more crappy by the minute with idiots promoting stuff like this.
Like many, you underestimate Microsoft. Microsoft has had a stake in virtually every successful American PC platform, and not because of luck. It is one of the best-managed companies in the world, and certainly the best-managed company in the software industry.
Microsoft decided in the 1970s that it wanted to be the dominant software company, and set about making its BASIC the standard programming language for microcomputers. By about 1980, it had done that; virtually all the major American PCs came with variants of Microsoft BASIC.
The fact that Microsoft had to buy QDOS to secure a deal with IBM, while the incompetents at Digital Research dithered, is yet another example of the aggressive tactics Microsoft has always used. Buying an OS wasn't part of the original strategy (the goal was to make sure IBM used Microsoft BASIC), but once Microsoft owned the OS, it put all its efforts into making that OS the standard. As with BASIC, it succeeded.
When the Mac introduced the GUI to the masses, again Microsoft was there. Having seen what a goldmine Lotus 1-2-3 was, it used every tactic available to secure dominance of the key applications (word processor, spreadsheet) on the Mac platform. It still dominates the Mac applications market today. However, when is became clear that Apple would not open the Mac platform, Microsoft put every effort into consolidating its hold on DOS, and set about establishing its GUI (Windows) as the standard. Again, despite technological inferiority in may respects, Microsoft established its GUI as the standard.
In establishing the Windows standard, Microsoft decided it would have to replace Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Perfect, neither of which was available for Windows (nor showed much interest in it). Rather than wait helplessly, or let Lotus and WordPerfect decide which GUI was best (assuming they would ever have come round), Microsoft decided to act, and aggressively pushed Windows and Word/Excel. Once again, all the competing task-switchers and graphical environments fell by the wayside (in large part because they had nothing like Word and Excel). As a side-effect of consolidating its hold on the operating system, Microsoft managed to crush WordPerfect and Lotus, which had kept their key applications tied to DOS until it was too late.
With its hold on the desktop secure, the next step was the PC server market, which was dominated by Novell. By integrating network client software with Windows, Microsoft set out to establish NT (after the failure of Lan Manager) as the standard server for Windows clients. Novell tried to compete head on, and was driven almost to the point of irrelevance. At the same time, Microsoft folded TCP/IP client software into Windows, making non-Microsoft TCP/IP packages redundant.
Within the last few years, there has been yet another Microsoft assault on a market, this time the market for web browsers. Netscape Navigator had a huge market share when Microsoft began its push into the market, but has already been relegated to second place. The fact that some of the tactics Microsoft has used are objectionable (possible even illegal) doesn't change the reality that it is well on the way to winning yet another key market. All that's standing in its way is the US Department of Justice.
Those who have and continue to underestimate Microsoft (whether because of ignorance of jealousy) just make it easier for it to consolidate its hold on the PC industry. The examples of Digital Research, IBM, Lotus, WordPerfect, Novell and Netscape should be enough to convince any rational individual of just how competitive Microsoft is.
On reflection, you may want to consider that the IBM PC platform was essentially just part of the herd through most of the `80s. Towards the end of the decade, you could still buy superior PCs based on the 68k and other (e.g. ARM) architectures.
When the PC broke from the pack in the early `90s, most of the IBM legacy was obsolete. Video adapters rely on accelerating GDI, audio cards tend to rely on WSS or SB16, everyone uses Ethernet rather than TokenRing, hard discs use SCSI or EIDE, nearly everything uses PCI (or VLB on `486s) rather than ISA (or MCA), and so on. In point of fact, most of the IBM relics are more of a hindrance than a help.
Ultimately, given the examples of the PS/2, OS/2, MCA and TokenRing, I think it's clear IBM hadn't got a clue.
> You're either very young or have a very poor
> memory. It was IBM that almost single handedly
> brought personal computers into the mainstream
> back in the early eighties. Microsoft rode IBM's
> coattails into prominence as a result.
> IBM may have handled the PC business badly after
> it exploded (I think few would dispute this),
> but make no mistake: it was them behind the
> explosion.
This is not accurate. Microcomputers were becoming `mainstream' before the IBM PC. There was, however, no standard microcomputer platform, because although they often used identical or similar CPUs, each brand of microcomputer ran its own proprietary operating system (which made clones difficult or impossible to make, thereby preserving high margins). If Microsoft had given IBM control of MS-DOS (through a sale or an exclusive agreement), the IBM PC would have been just another proprietary platform (though probably a reasonably successful one, due to the IBM name).
What made the IBM PC revolutionary was IBM's blundering in using an operating system it did not control. This allowed Microsoft to sell the `IBM' operating system to anyone, so creating an IBM-compatible system was only a matter of imitating the BIOS (like its competitors, IBM used a commodity CPU). Over time, the MS-DOS (later Windows) platform destroyed the traditional high-margin PC market, then the workstation market, and is now doing the same in the small server market. Large servers and mainframes will probably be next.
In encountering IBM's stupidity, Microsoft essentially got lucky. Nevertheless, it turned its good fortune into a tool by which to create a commodity hardware platform, from which we all benefit (remember the price of a Sun workstation in the 1980s?).
I do not use Microsoft software, and object to many of that company's practices, but am very grateful to it for its role in creating the commodity microcomputer standard which allows me to buy cheap desktop and notebook PCs that are better than workstations costing several times as much (look at the price of a SparcBook if you don't believe me).
Intel played a part too, in the improvement of its CPUs through the aggressive appropriation of RISC technologies pioneered elsewhere, but what made the IBM PC platform a phenomenon, especially in the early days, was Microsoft (which did with the OS what it had already done with BASIC). IBM was just the first distributor of the Microsoft platform.
The question would more aptly be put "what has Microsoft done to
:-(.
*adversely* *influence* the computing world as we know it?" The
answer is that Microsoft is pretty-much single-handedly responsible
for how the great majority of people perceive computers and
software. Bloated, expensive, frequently requiring updates (and
patches for the updates), insecure and unstable. This is one of the
things that irritates me most about Microsoft. That they've used
anti-competitive, some would say even un-ethical, business practices
to promote the use of inferior products beyond all reason. Take the
recent example of the "Melissa" virus. Did you notice how none of
the reports in the popular (non-tech) media mentioned that the
problem was restricted to those using a *Microsoft* email client and
*Microsoft* word processing application? People think this kind of
thing is *normal*! For cryin' out loud - there's an entire industry
built around the big, gaping holes in Microsoft products that allow
this kind of thing to happen. And has there ever been, on any other
computing platform, applications that routinely include a re-install
option as a matter-of-course? Not *upgrade*, but re-install? People
think that regular crashes, reboots and re-installs are *normal*.
The list of these kinds of things is endless.
And Microsoft is probably more responsible than any other single
entity for suppressing innovation. This due to the sheer smothering
effect their dominance has had on the industry.
> But they really helped get computers into the mainstream
Nonsense. IBM did that with the introduction of the "IBM PC." In
fact, some would argue that Apple actually did it first with the
introduction of their computers. Particularly the Apple II. Be that
as it may, it was the respectability of the name "IBM" that
legitimized the Personal Computer.
As regards computers in the workplace: the company for which I worked
at the time the IBM PC was introduced was getting along quite nicely
with a very aggressively priced small system made by a company called
Alpha Micro--along a few CP/M-based "PCs", thank you very much. It
might shock you to learn the the very first WYSIWYG word processor
was WordStar and it shipped first for CP/M machines. And there was
no dearth of spread sheet or other productivity tools, either.
Contrary to popular, and mistaken, belief: Microsoft did *not* invent
the concept of "personal computing." But they did eventually define
it. Much to the loss of of us all
This fills in more than gaps for just you -- I have already forwarded this to several friends who began with Win3.x and still are nervous about UNIX. It is an excellent training aid for moving people out of the M$ environment and into the real world. What I would love next would be something similar discussing mainframes and the evolution of business computing, but I guess that I might have to write that myself.
Thanks.
What has Microsoft done to destroy the computing world as we know it? Microsoft got more people to view computers as a tool instead of a nerd-only piece of hardware. Many people say the reason we need "open source" software is because people do not want to use Microsoft's OS in the workplace. Well what if you didn't have a computer in the workplace TO use? What if all you had was pen and paper? Look at it this way: many of you would be out of a job. Of course its not all Microsoft's doing. But they really helped get computers into the mainstream (something IBM could never do.. just look at the way they marketed OS/2). I'd like to see the free software community stop bashing (without very good reason) Microsoft. Not everything they do is evil and greedy (I know I'm going to get flamed because I'm agreeing with the way of Microsoft.. and Linux users have an almost nazi-like hatred towards Microsoft). Ironically its Microsoft which allowed me to find Linux. If it were not for their OS and support for internet protocols (hey, they could have gone fully MSN) I would have never found Linux (and I would have been another shareware writer in the large pool of shareware authors). If you want to blame anyone, blame the hardware companies for not allowing me to use the hardware I _bought_ (this is like telling you that you cannot drive your new shiny car unless you use a certain gasoline, oil, and tires that the manufacture specifies).
Just incase you are wondering.. I only use Linux now. But bashing without cause makes us all look like idiots.
Anyways can we please not have another "open source vs. GNU" or "open source writeup" or anything to do with politics (for a little while). The great thing about Slashdot (before the presure to dominate the galaxy with open source software because we are gods and commercial world should bow to us) was the technical articles. I have not seen a posting about _software_ in a very long time. Yet this is what we talk about every single day (free software, "open source", yadda yadda). Politics are okay--as long as we don't become politicians. I rank Slashdot currently as being a political web site dealing with Linux/Open Source/GNU problems. Not a news for nerds web site like it used to be.
Absolutely! Or just tell us the address of the squid proxy Rob and the others are using... ;-)
Linux was (still is?) the only OS that supported Java as binary format. It had (still has?) a few drawbacks and should be considered a gimmick.
Guesses, anyone?
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
For those who just can't wait, I've mirrored the first section and a half (which is all I could get) at:
http://www.newhackcity.com/arenn/os s-whole.html.
You lose! Now go look up "Godwin's Law" in the Jargon file, and type one thousand times, "Comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis are trite." Typing it once in vi and then hitting 'yy1000p' doesn't count.
But seriously folks, Hitler and the Nazis were really really bad, and just about any comparison of non-Nazis to them is disrespectful to the memory of the millions who died under the Nazi regime.
Please, find another metaphor to abuse.
--
You're either very young or have a very poor memory. It was IBM that almost single handedly brought personal computers into the mainstream back in the early eighties. Microsoft rode IBM's coattails into prominence as a result.
IBM may have handled the PC business badly after it exploded (I think few would dispute this), but make no mistake: it was them behind the explosion.
When my FUD101 paper was referenced on Slashdot, we didn't even notice the load until somebody pointed out that FUD101 was on Slashdot.
Of course, the fact that everybody was at Comdex might have something to do with that too (grin).
Our web server box was (and is) a Pentium 166 with 64mb of RAM and a 1gb IDE hard drive. At the time it was hanging off of a single T1 line. I think I had just updated it to Red Hat 5.1 and the 2.0.35 kernel. Some things that probably helped it survive:
1) I don't do a lot of bulky graphics. Lots of bulky text, but not bulky graphics.
2) Everything was being statically served. No dynamically generated pages anywhere on the system.
3) When I updated to Red Hat 5.1, the Apache configuration got slaughtered but I didn't notice. Thus it was using the default Red Hat configuration. So it wasn't trying to do a reverse DNS lookup on each incoming connection, it was just logging the raw IP numbers. This greatly reduces the load on a system, at the expense of making it hard to see where people are coming from. (But I found a great utility that takes log files and "DNS-ifies" them, i.e., does the reverse lookup on all the #'s and creates a file as if Apache had its reverse lookups turned on, but without the load of having multiple Apaches all trying to do it at one time).
4) That box does nothing but serve web pages. No EMAIL, no FTP, no proxy server, nothing but web pages. When I logged in to find 100 EMAILs in my box from Slashdot readers, none of those EMAILs contributed to the load on the web server.
I think the important parts were that it was serving static pages, and the reverse DNS lookups were turned off. In general, Apache will saturate a T1 on quite modest hardware if you are just serving static pages. (And at the time, Slashdot had "just" a T1, meaning they couldn't hit me any harder than they were hitting Slashdot!). So if you have a 64mb Pentium 166 hanging around with a spare 1 gig IDE hard drive, don't worry about beefing up your hardware to survive a Slashdotting -- beef up your pipe (and get rid of those bulky CGI scripts!).
-- Eric
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Well, as you say this is a never ending discussion (see for instance the comments to the GNU/Linux vs. Linux poll on /.) The reason for calling the OS GNU/Linux is that the OS is more or less a GNU system with Linux (the kernel) instead of Hurd. Also, calling the whole OS Linux makes it difficult to know if you're reffering to the kernel or the whole OS when you say Linux. Anyway, read what RMS has to say and decide for yourself.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
>>...we may someday find ourselves with nobody to hate.
Forgive me for being a wide-eyed hippy kook, but:
1) there's no shortage of Bad Guys -- see also Oracle
2) if we have nobody to hate, is that not a GOOD thing?
I thought the point was to have an enjoyable, reliable platform that everyone could share.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
So, is it time to liquidate all Microsoft assets to the highest non-ms-involved bidders?
This delves too much into partisan political stuff for my tastes... "Why the Government Withdrew From Defense of Open Stanards" mentions the Republicans slashing the budgets of gov't programs to encourage local and community development "even as local need for the funds exploded with the expansion of the Net".
Unfortunately, it ignores that the government handing out money for high-bandwidth lines doesn't prevent anyone from using standard-breaking protocols over those same lines. Even if the money were spent on unix web servers and some HTML guys, I think the post-critical mass occurrence of corporations catching onto the hype wave and creating non-standard proprietary content delivery methods would have been the same.
Whenever government is involved with something high profile, it ends up getting politicized. When the press starts yowling, broad feel-good but ineffective and usually harmful things end up happening... Witness CDA, CDA II, the clipper chip, etc.
Of course, the government demanding openness in what they use is obviously good. But the people surrendering control to the federal government as a big, happy defender against evil and technical guide is *really* naive. The work far thus with the net may have been quite beneficial, but that was before AOL got their link, the press was all over it, and every huckster in sight started scrambling to show their wisdom on "how to deal with" the internet.
We ought to have some kind of automatic mirror system at slashdot -- if just to take any page directly pointed at and have it at slashdot for a day or so.
-Lars
While this isn't really "news", it is info for nerds, stuff that matters.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
A shorter version of the same story (IMHO) can be found here.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
I didn't get a chance to read the entire article, because their server is dying. But I did read the first and last pieces.
I find his notion that the Government *SHOULD* be funding competing software projects to commercial products to be distasteful. And while I'm a bleeding heart liberal, this really does strike me as socialism gone too far.
Government *IS* necessary to fund items which would not be possible to perform through free market funding to the benefit of all citizens... roads, police, fire, defense, education, etc.
But software is something that works *VERY* well in the free market. If someone desires some piece of software, they pay a programmer to write it for them. Whether that be paying someone to develop internally, or paying some via the purchase of a commercial product.
And a final point. Funding something via tax money doesn't make it free. It just means that everybody is *FORCED* to pay for it whether they like it or use it.
At least with commercial products, if I don't like it I don't have to pay for it. Whether than be Microsoft, Corel, Oracle or RedHat.
I would love it -- we all would -- however, this would be a technical violation of copyright in all cases except those where the author explicitly gave permission for the text to be mirrored or otherwise copied.
99 per cent of the mirrored authors wouldn't mind, but eventually someone would complain, possibly even sue, and then Slashdot would have to permanently stop the mirroring anyway.
IANAL, but the above seems fairly obvious even so.
There's a technical problem, too: the bandwidth load on Slashdot would go way up, slashdotting Slashdot. I would guess their bandwidth would increase 100-fold on average, 10,000-fold peak. Think about what's on the far end of those links we click on here...
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
Microsoft was outselling the Mac even just with DOS. It never had anything to do with technical merit. "Technically good enough" isn't even the point, it was that the PC dominated the market, and the PC was based on DOS, so DOS apps dominated the market. Microsoft gradually played on that to gain control of the applications market themselves.
Microsoft has been riding on top of that ever since -- doing a brilliant job of staying on the horse, yes, but to quote you, so what?
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
It's true that this standard platform did not dominate 90% of the market, and it's true that the market was tiny compared with what came later. You're partly right, but in a very misleading way. What's "standard", only something that is 90% of the market?
There was a point where, if you wanted to pick just one platform to write software for, or to buy and have the most software available, that was it. Going for anything but CPM was as nonstandard as Macs and Linux are today: they had their followers, but the market was smaller. The issue at times of 8080 versus 8085 versus z80 was a little like 486 vs pentium or P5 vs K6 etc -- minor.
(This is not a negative comment about the competition for that platform, by the way... other cpu's such as the 6502 and 6800 had many good points, and in some circles, were more widely used. But I digress.)
The real answer to "What made the IBM PC revolutionary" is utterly trivial: IBM made it, and everyone had been waiting with bated breath for years to see if and when IBM would leap into the microcomputer market, and thereby give it legitimacy. After reading hundreds of articles saying precisely that, IBM wised up and made the plunge, and thereby changed history.
If IBM had not done so, most people would never have heard of Microsoft (I was unfortunately already acquainted with their sucky 8080 CPM products), and the 8080/8086 line of processors might well have withered away in the face of competition from e.g. the technically superior 68000 (16 bit successor to the 6800).
I was working at a company that made a 64 processor CPM product, which died when the PC and DOS became so popular that DOS compatibility was more important than anything else. That was in the early 80's. When was the last time you saw a 64 processor DOS or Windows box?
Anyway many of your other points are on target, but it doesn't paint quite the right picture; we all would have done better without Microsoft (who originally was just lucky, as you said), and also without IBM. Innovation died almost instantly, sacrificied for compatibility with utter crap.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
And I've been a professional programmer for two decades, but have almost never had to use a Windows box at work, so it's just plain wrong for you to say "...is because people do not want to use Microsoft's OS in the workplace. Well what if you didn't have a computer in the workplace TO use?" That is an impossible assumption; Microsoft didn't invent computers, not even in the workplace. They simply managed to force a large number of workplaces to run their monopolistic software.
Don't forget that the spreadsheet was not invented as a windows app, nor was email, nor were databases, nor was presentation software (Xerox PARC may again win that one), etc, etc, etc.
Go check your history before you started assuming things right and left.
Also, don't post inflammatory posts and then say "let's not start a flame war!" You just did. Back off, jack.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
private industry does software well?
really?
let's see, the us gov't between the 60's and 90's came up with the internet. a worldwide network with standard protocols.
private industry came up with prodigy, aol, and compuserv. online services that wouldn't interoperate.
since private industry went net.happy, we've had a slew of closed protocols hit the net, limiting people's ability to communicate.
sorry, i still find the gov't much less noxious then anything "the market" and private industry is coming up with. at the very least the gov't has a mandate towards openness and public service that it has to try and fulfill. "the market" has no such mandate and in fact trumpets it's lack of interest in the public good as a selling point.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Despite their server being slashdotted so quickly, the snippets I did see looked interesting. I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrrow...
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
---
IBM may have handled the PC business badly after it exploded (I think few would dispute this), but make no mistake: it was them behind the explosion.
---
My Apple IIe would beg to differ... It was the force that brought computing to the desktop.
As would my Mac... It was the force that brought computing to the desktop of the average everyday person. Countless imitations would seem to support this premise.
IBM did its part in bringing cheap computing to the enterprise market, but it didn't start the revolution by any means. PCjr - too little, too late.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
That little amd box (board? :-) that had the 16mb ram drive did a pretty good job holding us off.. It has a university connect though, i'd doubt anything we could afford
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
I mirrored the entire single html copy of the document at:
/slashcache/oss-whole.html
:-)
http://myc.liquidchicken.org
Its a high capacity site and a linux box, enjoy!
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
plagerism of the books in the bibliography,
sandwiched by As far as ``The Origins of Open Source Software''
go, the origins lie in the egos of Eric Raymond
and Bruce Perens.
Next!
A more considered view of Microsoft comes from
people who were regarded as too inflammatory to
``sell'' free software to business and the masses
(the raison d'être of the ``Open Source''
movement)---the FSF in the essay
``Is Microsoft the Great Satan?''.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
Let's get some of our less-educated readers/writers to take a peek at this article. It may clear up some of the FUD.
(But I doubt it.)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
So what is the relationship between GNU and Linux? I hoped that this artical would sort it out. I read on /. that RMS claimed 'Since GNU initiated the Linux project, it should be called GNU/Linux'. Without wishing to open the wound of the Linux - GNU/Linux - Gnulix debate, does RMS have any basis (even if misguided) for this claim ?
I thought Linus started Linux independantly and just used the GNU tools because they where there. RMS was (and still is, I think) developing his own kernel called Hurd (as in GNU/Hurd I suppose!).
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
What about if the article posting system first sent an email to webmaster@sitename with a warning that they were about to be experiencing heavy traffic, then posted the article 10 minutes later. Something like "Avast, y'art about to be slashdotted. Batten down the hatches and prepare to restart."
At least they would be warned and be ready to deal with the traffic, instead of wondering what was going on with their server. None of the news posted here is really so timely that the ten minute delay would matter to us, and it seems courteous to warn people we are about to trash their server.
Problems:
Not every site will have someone at that address. It won't work for everyone.
Would the warning and the knowledge of exactly what was happening actually help the site manager? I'm not sure.
The warning could also ask for permission for /. to make a mirrored copy available. Then if they feel overwhelmed, all they have to do is tell /. to mirror it (/. would save a private copy before posting).
/. policy to change the link in the story to the mirrored copy.
It could even be
And to be nice to the site, the mirrored copy, if HTML, could use the BASE headder tag to leave all the other links active for those interested in exploring the site.
Linux was born in 1991 by a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland whose first name, Linus, led to the naming of the language.
Linux is a language? Oh, yeah, I seem to remember that from another article, perhaps from ZD. And references to the "GNU Foundation" are annoying, but not so bad.
Still, I find the ideas interesting. The basic premise is that the battle between free software/standards and proprietary software/closed formats is related to a corresponding issue of control between the government and private companies.
Interesting, though I disagree.
Government funded open software and the Internet because it was an interesting science project, and private industry didn't see enough short-term profits to do it. Once the profits came into view, government was no longer relavent, and for once, it stepped out of the way, instead of into the way.
This is starting to wander off topic a bit...
OTOH, there are those who argue that the government's actions interfere with the "natural order of things" in free markets.
That's an anarchist view of free markets, as sometimes advocated by Libertarians. I prefer the more traditional Conservative/Republican view (granted, the association of an economic model with a political party is a subjective generalization):
The role of government in the free market is to keep the market free. Government steps in when supply and demand are unable to function, due to fraud, abuse of monopoly power, and such. While the free market may legitimately create a monopoly, that monopoly may use its position to prevent new competitors from emerging, despite market conditions that under other circumstances would encourage new competitors.
So with that philosophy, government should step in and stop Microsoft's exclusive licensing practices, and probably prohibit unequal OEM licensing deals. Maybe they should do something about product integration (DOS/Windows and Browser/Windows), but that's less clear. Additional action might be appropriate to repair past damages, for punative purposes, or to prevent future abuses.
That's how I see it.
easy to use OS? Try MacOS. It's buggy just like windows, but it's easier and it's been introducing people to computers since 1984. Microsoft stunted the developement of OSen that could have made it _far_ easier to learn computers than Windows does when they started monopolizing the market.
I'm glad you say: 'Windows became synonymous with "computer." '
So since windows isn't really _good_ at anything, my computer-illiterate family members, forced to use windows, think that "computer" means unstable, hard to use (sure, easier than linux, but definitely not easy. no way. not half as easy as MacOS), impossible to understand, and slow. I try to explain to them that these are traits of Windows, but they don't understand. The statement sounds redundant since windows and computer are synonymous.
so thanks to microsoft for making the world think of computers, which are 100% logic, as unstable.
-gcb
Your problem is easily fixed. Make yourself an account. Turn off GNU stories. The end.
Juiced? Or Not?
Yes, it would be useful for the government to be involved (along with industry) in setting standards for important infrastructure stuff like operating systems and network protocols. But it is possible to create and maintain such standards without government control.
IMHO, the IETF is a prime example of what can be done when people from government and industry and academia all work together on an equal footing.
--
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Michael Dillon - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Check the website for my Internet
I've hated Microsoft since before I ran Linux, since before I was ever on the Internet. In the original "Triumph of the Nerds" on PBS, Steve Jobs said something to the effect of 'I don't fault Microsoft for being big, and selling a lot of software. I fault them for making shoddy products...'. Anyone that's had to use MS tools for building software can attest to the lack in quality, and that's what I think the point of the White Paper was.
Until the government started to ignore open source as a viable paradigm in the late 80's, software was good. It was utilitarian. It followed standards and people evolved software to the point that there was a consensus of what quality was. Bad software generally didn't exist.
Microsoft just happens to be the biggest purveyor of bad software. The article insinuated that there are more companies, in the Unix world even (HP, SUN, SGI, etc.) that have damaged the 'movement' by constructing proprietary, closed versions of the OS. MS just happens to be the biggest target, so they're easy to hit.
I'll admit that the web site that hosted the document is very anti-Microsoft, and the slant of the article was obvious, but if you look past that, the question that arises concerns the fact that a shrinkwrapped box of software at CompUSA, which I have to pay good money for, has *worse* quality than something I can download for free on the Internet. Why is that? Why did good software go away? Why is it coming back? How can we help it come back faster? Why do we need it so badly now?
It's a shame that people have to home in on 'Microsoft this', 'Microsoft that' and miss the essence of the article.
-MattyJ
Microsoft got more people to view computers as a tool instead of a nerd-only piece of hardware.
... as it could have been'), they've got a number of sins on their hands.
.doc format), creating massive friction in the otherwise free flow of information between people. Or continually re-inventing the wheel, never quite right and always a little different, rather than building on an existing base, just so they can call it theirs.
No, sorry, that was Apple. Whatever else folks might think of Apple, it was unquestionably the Apple II that started the whole ball rolling beyond the 'toggle the front panel switches' S-100 bus hobby boxes, in no small part because of the appearance of VisiCalc (the first (?) spreadsheet program). Business folks bought "VisiCalc machines". That the Apple II could also interface to a color TV and had built-in BASIC led to lots of educational programs that the schools liked, and Apple has been strong in the education market ever since.
IBM borrowed heavily from the Apple II in designing the IBM-PC, in general concept (built in BASIC (originally), slots, 5-1/4" disk (vs older 8" still popular on some CP/M machines) open hardware architecture) if not hardware specifics. And it was IBM (not Microsoft) that encouraged further penetration into the business market. Businesses had heard of IBM, and it seemed a little more conservative than some weird fruit company. Nobody outside the small computer industry itself had heard of Microsoft then. The IBM-PC (itself a successor to IBM's earlier attempt at a desktop computer, the 5100) put the conservative big-business blessing on the whole concept of individual computers, rather than terminals tied to the corporate mainframe.
The next major shift in people viewing computers as a tool instead of a nerd-only piece of hardware came with the Macintosh, the less-expensive, friendlier version (OK, parallel development to) the Apple Lisa. That opened it up to the traditionally technophobic arts majors. Microsoft didn't catch up to that technology until Windows 95, 11 years after the Mac was introduced, and arguably still hasn't (inconsistent UI model).
So no, despite MS propaganda to the contrary, and despite what the younger folks who've only been fully concious for the last five years may think,
Microsoft isn't the pioneer they like to pretend.
What has Microsoft done to destroy the computing world as we know it?
What have they done? Well, ignoring the implied oxymoron (obviously we know it as it is - perhaps you meant 'destroy
We could start at the beginning, with Microsoft BASIC - which was never a full BASIC. If you believe Djikstra, BASIC causes brain damage, and there's certainly some truth to that if its the first computer language folks learn. We might have been better off if Gates and Allen had done Algol, or Pascal, or any of a variety of other small languages that they could have done. (Except that they didn't have an example of to rip off.)
Or we could take MS-DOS, with its inheritance of all the bad things that CP/M borrowed from RSX/RT-11, like 8.3 filenames, and its backward slash filename separators, and its drive letters, and its brain-damaged memory model ("640K should be enough for anybody").
We could mention Microsoft's dismal and unenthusiastic support for it's own Xenix, a real unix-derived OS light-years ahead of MS-DOS, which Microsoft effectively killed (slowing the growth of personal Unix systems by how many years?) because they didn't want the competition with their real cash-cow, DOS.
Then there's the "embrace and extend" (or "purloin and pervert") strategy of corrupting standards and inventing (repeatedly, each time a little different) their own proprietary "standards" (like Word
Has Microsoft destroyed the computer industry? Obviously not -- it's here and they're here. But a good case could be made that the industry would be a lot farther along now if Microsoft was not what it is.
-- Alastair
Microsoft DOS -- called PC-DOS on IBM machines -- won because the IBM name was behind it. By itself it would have been yet another niche OS. (Well, actually it wouldn't have existed at all -- Microsoft only bought it to resell to IBM.)
Competitors to IBM in the PC market had to make them "IBM-compatible" to survive (as witness the failure of the IBM-incompatible DEC Rainbow, for example), which meant MS-DOS (as well as a degree of hardware compatibility). That says absolutely nothing about the relative merits of {MS,PC}-DOS as an OS, and everything about IBM's marketing muscle. IBM had gotten away before with selling less than technically brilliant OS's (eg, OS/360 vs, say, Burroughs MCP).
MS-DOS won by historical accident. If Kildall hadn't blown his initial meeting with IBM, we'd have all been using CP/M-86.
-- Alastair
IBM was just the first distributor of the Microsoft platform.
What a joke.
IBM designed (or had designed for it) the open architecture hardware and specified the OS. Compaq opened it up by coming up with a reverse-engineered BIOS. That the OS was from Microsoft was a historical accident - and indeed before Windows there were some quite successful DOS clones.
The platform was unquestionably IBM's. Before the reverse-engineered BIOS's became available, there were a number of Intel-based, MS-DOS running machines that did miserably in the market (eg the DEC Rainbow) because, even though they ran MS-DOS, they weren't 100% IBM-compatible.
IBM made the platform, IBM's reputation (and marketing clout) made the market. Microsoft was lucky and clever enough to go along for the ride.
(This changed when IBM made its mistakes with OS/2 and the PS/2 microchannel bus.)
-- Alastair
Actually IBM's first PC was pretty cool: built in APL and/or BASIC, integrated CRT and keyboard, and digital tape cartridge backup. It also cost a small fortune and didn't sell real well. (I refer to the IBM 5100. The machine they first called a PC was the 5150, but few people knew it by that, it was the IBM PC.)
:), slots, etc.
Even the 5150 wasn't that bad compared to the Apple II. It had more memory (up to 640K, although the first ones shipped with about 128K, vs 48K for the Apple II). It had similar built in BASIC (ignoring the math error in the first version
Comparing it to the Commodore 64 (which came some years later) is silly. Totally different market, for one. The C64 was a home machine, and so had hardware assists for games and entertainment software, but with virtually no support for business use. (Commodores PET-based CBM machines were targeted to business, not the C-64.)
There was a lot I didn't like about the IBM-PC, starting with the nameplate (I didn't like OS/360, either) and the choice of chip (too bad the 68008 wasn't available in time, IBM would have used it. They wanted a 16-bit chip with an 8-bit bus (to keep hardware costs down), but 68008 production wasn't up to the level of the 8088 then.) But lets be fair in our comparisons.
-- Alastair
Even (especially?) Libertarians will argue that the government has a role in keeping the market free, as for example by punishing those using (attempting to use) force or fraud in the marketplace.
Libertarians would certainly be decidedly against the practise by some gov't departments of requiring that certain documents, applications, etc be submitted as MS Word files.
(Of course, the Libertarian view would probably be to not have those particular government organizations in the first place.)
-- Alastair
I'm surprised at you. Here you go calling yourself a bleeding heart liberal, and endorsing government funding of roads, police, fire, defense, and education (all of which, by the way, (possibly except defense) have been successfully performed through free market funding at some time or another), and you don't advocate taxpayer support of something as critical to our information infrastructure and civilization-as-we-know-it as software!?
Are you sure you're not a crypto-libertarian?
-- Alastair
Hard to believe that this article praised the government for doing all this stuff, when in fact, it was done by individuals like Englebart, and at universities like MIT and Stanford. All the government did was to concentrate funds. If the government weren't in the business of "concentrating funds", some other institution would. They don't today, of course, because the common perception is that it's the government's job. Twisted circle.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I finally got the last of the article and finished reading it. I found his theme that only government can free us repugnant. So I sent an email off to the author, and am also posting it here.
---
I found your article quite interesting and informative.
However, the wealth of factual information is diluted by political ideology.
First of all, I entirely agree with you that the government needs open standards
for its purchasing. You have no argument with me there. Taxpayer money
should not be used to support one corporation against another. However, the
conclusions throughout pointed to government as our savior against the rapacious
corporations.
Although the government funded much of the early work on the internet and other
computing innovations, the actual work was done by individuals. The government's
role was to concentrate funds for the research. If the government did not
concentrate funds (and the public didn't expect them to) it is extremely probable
that some other institution would have.
As to the notion that it was government that brought us open software (and the
implication that it will be the government that will return it to us), I only need
to look at your article to refute it. Linux, apache, sendmail, Samba, etc., etc.
None of them are government projects. They existed long before the Microsoft
anti-trust trial.
The proper role of the government with regards to software is to keep out. Neither
promote one thing, or discourage another. The problem is solving itself right now
without the need for government assistance. There's always going to be speed bumps
on the highway of history, but if every time we encounter them, we stop to level
them out, we'll never get anywhere.
--
David Johnson
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
anyone have a mirror of this article.
It looked very interesting but I couldn't get most of it. Started out with a 4000 ping before I got halfway it was down altogether
Linux was the first operating system to include Java capability
Ha ha. Take a few buzzwords, shake well, and there's another fine article. You don't even need to know what you're writing about.
I think Microsoft filled/is filling an important role. They created an easy to use (albeit, buggy and expensive) OS and marketed it to the point that Windows became synonymous with "computer." I think there is also a benefit to everyone using the same OS, from a support perspective, an application perspective, a gaming perspective, etc. Without Windows I would not be the geek that I am, you can think less of me if you like, but I basically made my folks buy a PC and learned how to use it from scratch. You often must live with the swine to appreciate your bright shiny castle. What Linux needs is a one-button (my metaphor for mind-numbingly simple) install and setup that gives Net access, e-mail, and word processing. Then we can conquer the world. Oh yeah, and LOTS of drivers.
+&x
>> 2) if we have nobody to hate, is that not a GOOD thing?
Absolutely. What I wanted to point out was the danger of having a community united by hatred of a single company (or person). What happens to the community if the "bad guy" goes away?
I just try to focus on sharing my enthusiasm for open/free software because it works. IMHO, using it because, "it's not Microsoft," seems kind of trendy and short-lived.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Overall, I enjoyed the article and found it very informative.
What is starting to concern me is that so much of the pro-free argument is expressed as anti-Microsoft. I think free/open software is quite capable of succeeding on its own merits, without ever referencing the big mean software company.
As far as many people are concerned, the server battle is already over. They like fast, efficient, reliable servers that can be configured with a dial-up connection and telnet.
They also like having bugs acknowledged and fixed quickly.
I can't criticize anyone for wanting to attack MS, given their FUD attacks on open source software. I just think its important that GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, [your favorite here] be perceived as something more than, "an alternative to Microsoft". If Microsoft trips over its own feet (it can happen -- ask Apple and IBM), we may someday find ourselves with nobody to hate.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
A really good book about the history of the internet is
7 4/o/qid=922837777/sr=2-2/002-3116083-97718 26
Where Wizards Stay Up Late : The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon
Here is the amazon.com link to it
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/06848326
I know about it because my brother was one of the people reviewed in it. He was the author of the original FTP.
IBM's 1st PC was an inferior product to the Apple II and the soon to be released Commodore 64, But it had the IBM name on it. If a company had an IT department in 1981 it allmost allways had IBM mainframes or minis. The IT department got the job of picking one of those new desktops when the company decided to buy them. They allready had a working relationship with IBM so guess who got the contract.
Companies that didn't have computers didn't have any idea who Apple or Commodore were. In 1981 IBM was the 1st thing that popped into peoples mind when someone mentioned computers. IBM got the contract.
After IBM gained domminance in the workplace, they had a big edge in home computers. It was easier to pick up a IBM or a IBM clone, because it was like the one you learned how to use at work. Managers could take work home with them. Few of these people even realized they were buying a Microsoft OS. The buzzword in the 80's was IBM compliant. Microsft didn't become well known to the general public untill Windows 3.0 came out.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est