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."

Comments

Partial Mirror

[Aaron M. Renn]

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.

yikes!

[ninjaz]

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.

Your premise is incorrect

[Doug Merritt]

Your premise is incorrect. If Microsoft had never existed, we'd be doing just fine, thank you.

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.

Microsoft vs. Free Software

[DonkPunch]

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.