Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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'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 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
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
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,
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.
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
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
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
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.