Slashdot Mirror
If Linux Wasn't Open Source
ColourCure asks: "Maybe this has already been asked (definitely not an original thought), but how much of an impact do you think Linux would have made as a non-open source operating system? There's definitely more to open sourcing than being able to peek at the code. Would the open source movement even be that big without Linux backing it up? " Ah, I expect this to generate some controversy, but my personal feeling is that the time for Open Source has come. Linux just accelerated the time table.
If Linux wasn't Open Source, it wouldn't be Linux. Period
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Somewhere between none and minix.
Linus wrote Linux because he wanted a free Unix for the PC. If he just distributed binaries instead of opening the source, anyone could have gotten a free Unix that would run on *his* machine, one cheap 386 in Finland. If they wanted more than that, they'd have to request features, or pay him, or something.
At which point they could go out and buy SunOS, or Xenix, or work on making BSD free, or hack Minix or something.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
w/all the media attention Linux has been getting, I doubt that it would... Most of the other "side shows" are pretty much related directly to Linux.
Linux wouldn't be Linux if it weren't open source. It would have never spread the way it did, and as a result it would be an entirely different OS. I don't see how this can be debated. Linux when it was first released was extremely crude. Who is going to want to use such an OS amidst all the other alternatives?
The two very certianly complement each other very well. Many people wouldn't be a part of the movement if it weren't for Linux. I don't know that I would be. I'd like to think I would, but it was definately Linux that introduced me to the concept of Open Source.
Open Source is itself powerful enough now to stand on its own. That is for certain. But would it be where it is today without Linux? Perhaps not.
I'm very greatful for the both of them, and will continue my support as long as I can type.
The time has certainly come for Open Source.
--
So from my perspective whether or not it is open source is irrevalent to me.
I think Open Source would be powerful without Linux because I think that open source programs would probably still have a very large home on linux. It is after all a UNIX and it seems to me as though the FSF has its roots in UNIX (yeah yeah I know GNU is not UNIX, but every flavor of UNIX had all the GNU development tools before windows and DOS got a copy, Mac still doesn't have a copy, so the roots are definetly UNIX).
Pretty much (and I know the guy that didn't know what a
Well those are my opinions but I seem to be less of an Open Source maniac like most linux people are, so I don't know if my opinions reflect what would really happen. I guess the answer to that depends on why it is OK for Quake and Unreal to be commercial software but when the little guy makes commercial software for Linux every jumps down his throat for not opening the code. Answer that question and decide which side of the hypocritical coin that Linux falls on (Quake or small software) and you'll have your answer.
Until Linux came along, the GNU was making the HURD as its kernel for its own operating system. Development slowed when a gpl'ed kernel (Linux) became available, but it didn't stop...there are still people working diligently on the HURD. If linux wasn't open source, then I think those many people who have worked on linux would most likely have done their work on the HURD instead, and we'd still be where we are today, albeit with a much less attractive name :)
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
If by Linux you refer to the kernel, then most likely without an open source Linux work would have continued more diligently on the GNU HURD kernel and we'd have entually ended up with an open source (GPLed) operating system and kernel. It just would have taken longer.
Dave
After the same question was posed about solaris, it went Open Source, to an extent.
Does this signify the advent of the "closed sourcing" of linux?
Any bets?
Earn cash in your spare time! Blackmail your friends!
I think Linux definatly accelerated the OSS movement. As a life long Mac user (Im 18 so it wasnt hard to use them my whole life) I first heard of opensource from MkLinux. Even after i started booting MacOS and Linux on my machine looking for MacOS opensource projects brings in very few results and it is not very promising any way because the development tools you need are basicaly Metrowerks CodeWarrior and I could never afford that. On the other hand gcc and the other development tools on linux are free and i can afford them so I can recompile software and look for bugs and stuff and generaly help on some projects where as in MacOS i couldn't because as previously stated i dont have CodeWarrior.
Note: these are only my views and as stated by my age i have not been helping with opensource for all that long.
Can I Play With Madness?
If Linux wouldnt have released the Linux source code under the GPL, there definitely wouldnt have been as much cooperation from the Internet community. Programmers tend to stick to lofty (to them) ideals, and giving the world a totally free operating system was probably what interested most of the original Linux hackers (and most of the current ones too). There definitely would be a lot less cooperation from the hacker-community if it were not for that GPL license... we really owe RMS a big one here.
My opinion is that Linux would have remained a obscure project, from some Linus guy somewhere in Europe. And that would be about it... maybe most of us would be using and hyping FreeBSD by now.
Just my two cents...
One of my favorite comments about open source was (I think) made by Eric Raymond. He said something to the effect of "Linux is not the end all of operating systems. There will come a time when it is no longer sufficient. However, when that time comes open source will have had such an impact, that the idea that its replacement could be proprietary will be considered absurd"
I agree completely. Linux is great, but things will change in ways that linux can't change, and we'll need another operating system built from scratch with the hindsite we've gained when it does become outdated. (No, I don't foresee that anytime soon). While Linux gets the credit, this is much more an "open-source movement" than a "Linux Movement".
But what is a huge issue for most is the fact that Linux is free. If it weren't, I can't say it would be a much better choice than, say, some non-free BSD... and FreeBSD would definitely have a leg up on it. (Just like it does already! :)
The time for Open Source has definitely come. With or without Linux, it would have happened.
There would have been more reason to develop the Hurd. Chances are it would be in Linux's place. Or maybe one of the BSDs
Linux is, of course, the driving force behind the open source movement. Would the open source movement have continued? Probably. Albeit, not in nearly the force it has.
Most open source software is limited to small, specific applications tailored to certain purposes. Not only that, but aside from Linux, there are relativly few "big time" open source programs out there.
All movements need a flagship. The French Revolutionaries had freedom, the Grange had gold and silver, the Hippies had pot and sex. The Open Source movement has Linux. Something probably would have taken its place, but probably later and probably not as effectivly.
Would Linux be the same without the open source aspect? Of course not. Look at OS/2. OS/2 is/was, in all respects, a superior operating system and networking environment to NT. However, the Microsoft clout (in addition to braindead IBM marketting people...don't include Win95 support...what a bunch of morons) killed it. Literally the only thing that keeps Linux alive is the fact that its Open Source. Try and put Linux under the same marketting model as NT, and it would go over like a lead balloon.
It's hard to say for sure, but two things have led to the point we're at today in terms of media awareness:
1. The maturing of Linux.
2. The freeing of Mozilla.
It's unlikely that 2 would have happened without 1, but it could have happened due to another OS or product that would have occurred without Linux.
But surely if Linux did not exist, we would be on an entirely different path to free software than we are today.
No-one knows what could have happened. We could have had HURD, a windows clone, or something entirely better than anything else we have today.
It's quite possible that the existence of Linux, is inhibiting the development of a superior free operating system that takes the best traits of all OSes and improves on them.
Bad events can have good consequences (such as the nuking of Japan leading to a relatively stable last 50 years), and good events can have bad consequences (maybe we would have been better off without Linux). We'll never know.
Torvalds would be fighting Microsoft for control of the OS market by selling the easy to use propriety bloatware that the public seems to love.
At least we'd see more cute penguins in the media.
The question hardly makes sense. There is no reasonable context. Not being Open Source would exclude nearly all of the contributions made by hundreds of volunteers. Linux is not written by some small cadre of developers who decide whether they will share. By definition, if it hadn't been GPLed, it would never have registered in the would of contemporary computing.
Where would a non-Open Source Linux be today? Perhaps about as far along as BeOS. The appeal of Linux is the source. Without the source and the right to read, distribute and change it, Linux would be no where.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
See the historical context of the rise of Linux:
"Most of you steal your software... What hobbyist can put years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"----An Open Letter to Hobbyists, Bill Gates, Micro-soft, 1976
"GNU... is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free... Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air."----The GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation, 1985
Microsoft Windows vs. GNU/Linux, 2000
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
We've already seen the comment that "if Linux wasn't Open Source, it wouldn't be Linux." The argument is that a key part of the success to date of Linux is the enthusiastic participation of lots of people working very hard--for free. Now let's look at it from a slightly different perspective: so long as Linux is "open source" (in the sense that the user *can* view the source and alter it) it isn't going to be that much more successful. Or perhaps I can put it in slightly less inflammatory words: so long as Linux projects the ability to re-compile the kernel as one of the key features of the OS, Linux will only succeed to the point of being the most popular version of Unix. (Yes, Linux isn't GNU isn't Unix. Spare me.) Key point: Linux, like Unix, appeals to the computerphile--people who are intrinsically interested in how computers work. Even when KDE or another environment is bolted on the top, everybody likes to demonstrate how easy it is to do the low-level pedal-to-the-metal stuff from the command line. Not to push anybody's hot buttons, but that's the way Microsoft used to demo Windows 2.1. There was tons of power on the DOS command line--but there was color! and a mouse! and cool stuff! and it almost, kinda, sorta worked like a Mac! When Windows exploded was when Microsoft made the DOS command line go away. Sure--its still there. But the OS wars ended when Win95 made computing reliable *enough* (which is not to say absolutely reliable), and the UI simple enough (which is not to say simple) so that most users found the experience worth the cost of the learning curve. You didn't need to be an experienced computer pro to use Windows. That happened because of the UI. And the "bloatware" that we all talk about is due to the UI. And the obvious speed hit you see is because of that UI. Most Linux users today aren't beholden to the UI--they're using the command line when they need to, and taking advantage of the GUI when it suits them. But to make broad inroads into the commercial (let alone the consumer) marketplace the command line has to go away. Give the Pointy-Haired Boss the perception that doing something odd on the command line will recompile the kernel (which, to him, is indistinguishable from issuing a launch order to the Air Force) and he won't touch that computer. Till Linux can't be recompiled by the end user, it won't be competition for Windows.
Linux is defined in itself by the fact that it's open source. For this very reason, it's pointless to ask... What if the transistor had never been invented? What if Bill Gates had been killed in a car accident when he was 15... What if... what if... unless you seriously want linux to become a close OS(which it virtually can't) these are not things to speculate about.
There is no way linux could have developed so quickly if it had not been Open Source. Linus would not have had the time or the energies to write and maintain a complete operating system. We, all the linux users of the world, have shown that it is very possible to write a full-fledged OS in Opec Source. Otherwise, linux would simply be another *nix. Therefore, be happy open source is here. Be happy you are part of the movement.
---
"First they ignore you, they they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Ghandi
As to where the open source movement would be... its position would be little or no different. The same itches would have itched geeks in the ensuing years, and they would have scratched the same way. Albeit on top of BSD or whatever.
History is full of innovations that are made at almost the same time by two or more inventors. A free operating system, in this analysis, is no different than many other innovations in the past.
-Leonard
... Instead of Tux ones :)
Seriously, then a great deal of the effort that went into the Linux kernel would have gone into either BSD and/or HURD. The way I see it, the time has come for OSS. If it hadn't been Linux, it would have been SOMETHING... It was inevitable.
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
... because the open source status and the quality of the codebase as well as the installed system can not be easily separated. Take the installation procedures - there must be dozens of them , one (or more) for every distribution. No closed source system would succeed with that. But on the other hand, take the bug fixing process. No closed source system would ever work that effectively. More points come to mind where IMO the open source status of linux makes it so different from things like Windows, MacOS, and, alas, Solaris that I dont think its appropriate to speculate much further.
We have seen a number of non open-source operating systems before and after linux hit the scene, but it is the OpenSource nature of Linux which has kept people interested in the operating system. BeOS which is a cool operating system also will likely never become as popular as Linux for two reasons, 1. It ain't free: Users hate having to dish out money for updates 2. It ain't open: People are less willing to invest time developing for it. More FUD.
The robust Linux operating system however has been the sucess story that the Opensource movement has needed for a long time.
And if Linux wasn't open source, almost no one would ever had heard of it. Linus and maybe a few of his friends would be the only ones using it, if even they didn't get bored and give up on it.
Open Source is definately more than just being able to see the source code. It's also the right to make changes and distribute them to anyone, a sort of assurance that even if the original author vanishes off the face of the planet that the software can still be developed and supported, a support system that's not dependant on one central company to fix every bug single-handedly and then distribute as they see fit ($80 for a 6-month-late fix, for example), and a sense of community among the hackers (not definition 8) who do work on Open Source projects. Especially this sense of community is why most of us don't see many companies truely grokking Open Source.
-----
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
Linux still would have existed even if didn't exist as open source, but would it receive the praise that we give it today? Hardly. It would only be bought and sold by companies who truely found a use for bringing back a dinky 386 to serve as a DNS server or some other light-server duty.
Remember, Linus, when he developed Linux, actually distributed the source code to MIT and a few other places for them to aid in the developement, and it existed that way for a little more than a year before they released the first stable kernel. Rather than paying people to sit in a room and do something for the rest of their life which bored them to death, he utilized people who sat in a room and did nothing but program all day who would undergo a project like this for FREE (although paying them would have greatly helped improve Finland's unemployment rate)! The reason why Linux is so popular in the first place is because anyone and everyone who knew what an 'if...fi' statement was was either writing the source code of Linux or improving the programs which came with Linux.
If it wasn't for Joe Schmoe in some part of the world, I wouldn't be able to utilize my SB16 to play MP3s, and I'd have to plead to the company to use their time to create a driver for me! That's the true beauty of Linux and the reason why so many people love it, is because so many people created it. And if someone doesn't like it, they can make the changes theirself rather than e-mail the company (one in a million) to ask if they could change something in their next version!
Argh.
I think if Linux were closed source it would have about as much as an impact as Be does now --- a technically superior OS with a dedicated following, but no widespread acceptance (i.e. users rather that people who have merely heard of it).
Development would be probably a little slower on some stuff, too, methinks.
I believe that this is just another step towards our inevitable evolutionary fate.
Whether or not it came, or is, in the face of "Linux", this is the path we are taking now - to get us where we need to be.
Strange how millions of people with the same ideas (or at least geared in the same direction) should just happen to collide at one point. Ofcourse, thats not how it appears to us.
No, it appears as though we have, one by one, slowly seen what is going on and banded together. Growing together for the same goals.
Linux is only a single piece of the means to the end. One which we are destined to create together. Ofcourse, there are still a few generations left before we have the outcome. So lets keep it going and setup the future for those who will play the next and final roles.
1000 years is 1 day to god. "On the Seventh day he rested" (time check: the year is 5760 - as you can see time is running out)
And that's all I got to say about that.
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Marques Johansson
I think that the conception of 'open source' being a new thing is wrong.
It has existed since the dawn of computers.
The Internet has made it much easier for programmers from all over the world to work on projects together. It's made it much easier for them to find each other and to find interesting things to work on.
Unix, coupled with the Net, make for a perfect incubator for open source projects.
ALl I'm saying is, someone just stuck a label on it and decided to call it 'open source'.
I couldn't agree more. The single most appealing thing about Linux is the way it is being developed, but face it... It's still a bit crude compared to many commercial operating systems. As an OS for single or dual processor servers Linux is more than adequate, and has an almost unbeatable price/performance ratio (Almost, but not completely. I'm pretty sure OpenBSD and FreeBSD are easier/cheaper to maintain), but for most other purposes Linux still does not compare favourably to OS/2, NT 4.0 or even MacOS and Win9x.
Well this is probably kind of obvious, but I would guess the free *BSDs would be enjoying a larger userbase and more publicity than they currently are, for a start.
One of the reasons I've heard for Linux's success (at least initially) over the *BSDs is that it was available (and free) earlier, while the *BSD camp was involved with legal problems to do with their source. So it may have been that the same thing as what has happened to Linux would have happened to BSD. One thing to consider is the split of BSD into the three camps (Net, Open, and Free), which may have affected the success somewhat. It's very hard to compare the situations however, since there is only one Linux kernel, but there are lots of distributions - so the kernel is the same for everybody, but the other tools are different depending on the chosen distro. BSD is different, because it has three distinct kernels, and three sets of tools - and that's it.
What this means, is that the Linux community may feel more "as one" than the BSDs, due to the more defined split between each of the BSD distributions (yes, I know they still share a lot of code between them). A key factor in Linux's recent success has been all of the press it's had, would you get the same level of press with BSD in the same position (bearing in mind the 3 three distributions?). I think it's possibly that one of the BSDs might have really taken off over the others, possibly... I don't really know.
One thing that just occured to me, Linux and BSD are probably not much more or less fragmented than each other, in reality, but I most people see Linux as one, and the BSDs as three/divided.
On the other hand, if there were no "free" operating systems, I think one would have found it's way into the world anyway - there was a market for one, as the success of the current free OSes proves. Maybe GNU Hurd would have been picked up by more people and brought to a usable stage more quickly, or maybe someone else would've written something like what happened with Linux (Davix/DaveOS ;-).
Of course, this is all speculation, and my information might not even be very accurate. :-)
First, it was the closest thing at that time to the "holy grail"- a low-cost, high performance, Unix-like system that was not in some way compromised. Back then, running a personal Unix box usally meant one of three things: a) A surplus commercial Unix system, usually one that had been retired because of obsolescence or was deeply discounted after the maker dropped it (anyone remember the AT&T UnixPC "Fire Sale"?), b) A PC running a very expensive copy of Xenix or Interactive Unix, c) A PC running a Unix-alike like Minix or Coherent at the cost of some feature like swap, virtual memory, or networking.
Secondly, it became a focal point for all the open source (praticularly GNU) software which already existed. Hurd was still a long way off, but here was an OS which could run the GNU tools, gcc, and X11.
Was the fact that Linux was open source important? I think it was somewhat, but not as much as some might think. The fact that Linux was open source allowed it to be quickly enhanced to support a wide range of "real world" hardware (back then, building a spare box out of parts that included an XT disk controller was important- these days, you'd just run down to CompUSA and buy another 20GB). A closed source OS could have conceivably captured as much interest, but the person/company maintaining it would have had to dance quickly.
(A case in point is the downfall of Coherent, a competing, closed source OS which was targeted at many of the same markets Linux is moving into now. )
Would the Open Source community be as big/imnportant today? Probably, but the rallying point would be very different. My personal guess would be gcc/egcs, though a closed source Linux might have hastened the development of Hurd; just so that the FSF could point to an Open Source OS which ran the GNU tools.
One final thought... let's not forget that early Linux was also a contemporary of 386BSD, the direct progenitor of FreeBSD and NetBSD. Now there is a "what-if" for you... what if Jolitz had been more responsive to providing fixes/updates? What if the USL suit hadn't occurred? Etc.
About a year before I installed Linux on my machine for the first time, I was just starting to learn Unix. During that larval stage, I heard about something unique, something my commercial-software-bred mind never dreamed would exist: A free Unix for 386's.
(And I mean free in the free-beer sense. I wasn't aware of the fact that it came with source code and all the "free-speech" aspect.)
I said to myself "Wow, how can that be?" and started looking into it. What was I looking into? No, not Linux. 388BSD! (eventually FreeBSD.) That's right -- BSD got a head start. I didn't download or install it at the time, since I only had a 386sx25 w/ 4MB RAM and a 120MB HD, and it was getting used for course-work in DOS, GeoWorks, and Win 3.1. I also had a measly 9600 baud serial link to the 'net, so downloading would've been a royal pain.
During that year, hardware got upgraded, I got an ethernet link, my Unix skills matured somewhat, and coursework moved from DOS/Win 3.1 to Unix-centric work. I went back to look for that free Unix I'd heard about, at which time Linux was evangelized to me. Had there been no Linux, I'd be a BSD user today. Instead, I installed SLS 1.03 (and later, Slackware 1.1.1) and never looked back.
That's about the long and the short of it: If there were no Linux, I suspect FreeBSD would've filled its role in my life and in many other hacker's lives. It might not have filled it as nicely, since it's more fun to conduct an OS revolution with an OS which is ostensibly a fresh rewrite, but oh well. Besides, I think Chuck (BSD's cute daemon) is a darn cool mascot for an OS, and could've made up for it.
I suspect if Linux weren't open-source, it would never have reached the critical mass that brought it to so many peoples' attentions back in 1994 and 1995. BSD or Hurd or something may have taken peoples' attention instead. Who knows?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Well, as many people have pointed out, there would not be Linux if it were not open-source. I mean, granted, Linus released a working OS to the net, but it was far from being a usable OS (other than use as a toy...)
/usr/src/linux, do a recursive grep (grep is the best tool ever!) on the error message, read the appropriate code surrounding the message to figure out what's going on, and mail the guy back with some suggestions on how to fix the problem. That is why open source rules, and that is why I love Linux. And I'm sure many other people love Linux and Open source for the same reasons...
But people saw potential, and since they had the source were able to help expand linux into what it is today.
So after having repeated what everyone else already said (you're welcome.) i'll had some more worthless stuff:
I was vaguely familiar with the concept of open source when I started using Linux. My OS of choice was Solaris when I set up my first Linux box, and came to appreciate the GNU utilities that the admins had kindly installed. For one thing I liked some of the options that some of the GNU versions offered (tar xvfz is much better than gunzip -c foo.tgz | tar xvf -) and as I became more curious about learning what made the box work I spent more and more time reading the source code of these utilities and learning what made them work.
another great advantage to open source was that if i downloaded a program and it didn't work quite as I wanted to... if I had the source, I could fix it! What a great concept! It made my life so much less frustrating.
After a couple years on Solaris I finally got together enough money to buy a cheap PC so that I could use a puter in my room instead of going to the uni computer labs, and I gave the whole Linux thing a try. (windoze has never infested my hard drive, i'm so proud!) I definitely love Linux. So here's my final anecdote:
A couple months ago a friend mailed me a question... programs were starting to segfault with alarming frequency, and he noticed some obscure message in his kern.log (forget what it was) and he had no idea what was wrong... so I go into
So to get to some sort of point: If Linux had not been open source, it would not have appealed to people like me. If it had not appealed to people like me, it would probably never have spread far... and Linux for a long time only spread among the hacker type... not until it had a large hackerish following did other people start playing with it. So if Linux had not been open source, I don't think it would exist.
As far as the open source movement, I think it would've done ok without Linux. It might have taken longer, but if there had been no Linux for people to focus their energy on, these people would have probably focused their energy one of the free BSD variants, or maybe even on the Hurd. Some open-source OS would've taken a similar position to the one of Linux. I think open source was destined to get big one way or another... it just might have taken longer...
I hope I haven't bored anyone, and I hope my rantings haven't been too redundant... peace out.
So you'd be using something else. And since I seriously doubt there'd be a free Unix as viable as Linux is right now, I really wonder how many of the current crop of Linux converts would be using it. I think we'd be back where we were in 1995 .
-MV
Let's look at it from another perspective. If we couldn't peek at the code, it wouldn't be interesting. Since we can, we go 'Wow' and start writing other 'apps' in the name of looking cool and gaining the respect of our peers. Was Linux fueled by developers who(as a night hobby) wrote cool programs so that they could walk in a different light? I think so. The fact that Linux is the 'in' thing right now makes it even more apparent. The only reason why M$ has more developers is because Windoze apps pay more. Linux is all about sharing and looking cool.
There would likely be better partnerships between hardware vendors and the vendor of proprietary Linux. The installations would probably have more bleeding edge hardware support, but wouldn't run well with old hardware. On the other hand, it would have poor market penetration. The stability would probably be worse.
...} do if it were GNU software?
I think that the system would be specialized. It would either be something geared at ISP's, large enterprises or for embedded use, but not all three. It would probably not attempt to crack the desktop market.
You might not see ``swiss army knife'' features like advanced routing, loopback block devices, or user-space network drivers. It's unlikely that there would be good support for hobbyists, such as amateur radio hackers.
The platform support would almost certainly suck. It would most likely not run on SPARCs, Alphas, PPC's, 68K's, Intels, Strongarms, etc.
The openness of Linux lets it be more things to more people, from small applications to big ones.
Anyway, proprietary software often makes or breaks it according to circumstances that have nothing to do with technical merit.
We could equally ask, how well would {Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, NT, BeOS,
So you're into S&M Bestiality huh? That might explain your mood. Try a women. or at least a RealDoll.
As for windows users being the smart ones, I have seen two big Windows advocates here. One (you) who obviously gets his vocabulary from movies his Mommy and Daddy shouldn't be letting him watch, and the other who didin't know that Linux had a GUI. Oh gee, your intelligence astounds me. Can you do long division and everything?
Linux was introduced at a time when unix was really screwed up with a bunch of proprietary systems. MS finally introduces a viable version of their "innovative" OS (note: didn't hear much about windows 1 & 2).
But the key was the availability of an OS that one could play with on a computer that they had access to. Also it is was critical that there were a lot of ppl that now had access to these computers.
I have no idea if the end of the Cold War has anything to do with this. However, I think that the international aspect of Linux development is very important. Hence, the maturity of the internet at this same time is also very important.
Nonetheless, I think that the most important aspect is the reason why GNU and Open Source even was started. The time to write the code is best left to ppl who are young, idealistic, full of energy, intellectually sharp, and without a whole lot of responsibilities.
Why?
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
I first met RMS back in 1987, when a mutual friend from MIT who had recognized him and called out to say hello, introduced us in front of the Harvard Square T stop. Right up front, even back then, he was promoting his GNU Operating System as a free clone of UNIX with all the source available. I smiled, said "That's interesting" while on the inside I thought he was completely nuts.
I didn't realize that some pieces of his OS puzzle were already written and that a roadmap for the rest was well underway, but at the time I couldn't help but think that the whole idea was just plain stupid. I remember talking with my friend about the endevour afterward and basically pointing out that nobody much cared about UNIX as an Operating System, they bought hardware. People paid huge sums of money for high powered LISP machines from LMI and Symbolics -- not because they ran LISP (for the most part) but because with that hardware and a talented programmer one could do amazing things. At the time I figured the same was true for the emerging UNIX Workstation market, and that these machines would always be far too expensive for a free Operating System to matter at all. Who would throw away a vendor supplied OS and support just to run GNU? Idiotic.
Even though it was obvious given that superior hardware like the Macintosh was getting close to Workstation potential at almost PC prices, I just didn't see that the PC class computer would gain the CPU horsepower and instruction set necessary to run a UNIX class operating system -- even though low end UNIXen were already available for the PC. The idea that end users, not developers might want to run UNIX seemed more far fetched than a vegetarian pigging out in the Central Square MacDonalds (this is Cambridge, mind you).
So, several years later, around early '93 or so, I found myself with a 386sx running Windows -- and hating every minute of it. Upon bitching to my friend about the piece of crap that is Windows, and beating myself over the head for not taking the hit and buying a Macintosh (price gouging or no) my friend pointed out that a BSD clone for the x86 was available called 386BSD, and that some folks were working on another called FreeBSD. He also told me about another cheesy UNIX kernel clone called Linux, but steered me to BSD and offered to make me a set of install floppies.
"Oh, and by the way -- it runs Stallman's 'Idiotic' software," he pointed out.
Brainy MIT blowhards; always ready to point out that you missed the obvious. So, given his amazing net pipe and my funding a few boxes of floppies, I was able to install the software and check it out. And it was good but not terribly usable (mostly because I had a hard time configuring a serial port for a modem, and X wasn't usable) so I shelved the whole thing again until my friend again told me I was being an idiot and gave me an Yggdrasil CDrom in '94. That Worked! I had the thing installed with X running in an hour, and was able to figure out the serial port stuff within a day or so.
I haven't run Windows on my home computer since. Not that RMS cares about my opinion (he is a wacko -- but the good kind), still I thank him for all the effort against such adversity. I also thank him for not listening to the likes of me because there must have been an avalanche of people telling him his idea was stupid and pointless. It takes a certain kind of crazy to persevere through many years of careful building, stage by stage, to success while the whole world views your endevour as Quixotic folly. They, and I, were wrong -- he was right. Period.
Thank you RMS.
--Maynard
I see nothing wrong with this. Linux is a kernel, and most Linux distrobutions do not hide this kernel or the Unix utilities from the user too much. I love it. So do alot of other Linux users.
This model probably doesn't make sense for many typical desktop users, but I don't care. Linux works for me and that's what I do care about. I only care about Linux being more successful to the point that it brings applications that I'm interested in to my platform.
Now, nothing is stopping a motivated vendor from taking the Linux kernel and overlaying a completely non-Unix working environment over it -- eg. one which replaces all of the Unix tools with a comprehensive GUI environment that replaces /sbin/init. Then you can have your GUI only easy to use OS. It wouldn't be Linux in the traditional sense -- it'd be something different. "Lindows" perhaps? Whatever you call it, I won't use it. I won't come near it. It's not for me. It does not cater to my needs. But that's ok, it works for another group of people entirely.
The point? To each his own. Linux does not have to be all things to all people, just like Ferrari's shouldn't come with tow packages, and heavy-duty pickup trucks shouldn't come with lowering springs and spoilers. But, there's nothing stopping you from dropping a nice V12 engine in both.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Are there any free or commercial UNIX compatible operating systems that are not derived from the original code? Without any USL, Berkeley or GNU code, everything would have to be done from scratch. Not just the kernel, but all of the utilities. Who would be crazy enough to undertake all this in a commercial, proprietary setting?
If Linux were proprietary, it wouldn't be sufficiently UNIX like so on those grounds alone it would differ, since compatibility was and still is an important requirement. What proprietary vendor could even make a business case for meeting such a requirement, starting from scratch?
What if Linux wasn't Open Source? Well, then it would be like SCO. SCO has some cool stuff, especially the non-stop cluster stuff they're doing with Compaq...and they have some warts, like all unix variants. (What I'd like to know is...where can I get the One True Unix all these variants are varying from?)
Bang the head that doesn't bang!
I know I really shouldn't carry this thread any further becuase this guy is an obvious troll, but am I the only one that sees the connection between staring at a windows box all day and incoherent speech, bad grammor, lack of conversation skills, etc. etc. etc. ?
wow. that is amazingly informed. your obvious higher intelligence has produced a great argument, founded in well prepared facts and excellent observations.
one point escapes me: if you're so anti-linux, why are you reading such a publication as subersive as slashdot?
oh, and please note: you seem to speak with the voice of truth. why post anonymously?
have a great day, and i hope when puberty starts, it isn't too rough on ya.
-------------- insert [signature] here
does anyone see the connection?? i think that this post has had the effect of drawing huge blinking radioactive neon arrows toward that fact. this thread is pretty weak.
-------------- insert [signature] here
Open Source is a licence to mutate the code into whatever you like, and like in nature, the ability to change is a GOOD THING(tm). If Linux was closed, like other *NIX versions I doubt whether it would have got this far, and when I say Linux, I just dont just mean the kernel, I mean all the GNU tools as well (personally I think the FSF and everyone involved with the GNU developments are unsung heroes of the Linux phenonmenon, thank you all). I think that Linux has been a catalyst in the mainstreaming of open source, from its roots with Richard Stallman and the FSF (please no flames on OSS vs. Free Software), as with all groups there are those who spend years in the wilderness, and then a group comes along that makes it palitable to the masses and a massive expansion phase ensues ( a social version of the big bang / inflationary universe theory ), just like the hippies in the 60s talking about environmental issues gave birth to the Green Parties around the globe and GreenPeace, which was the co-opted by the main political parties.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
yeah very weak, like your sagging blue penis, you whore
i am supposing that when i go to hell as a "fucking linux user" i will have to press "control-alt-delete" to log in??
>:)
-------------- insert [signature] here
If a closed source company makes the wrong technology bets, the users are stuck with it. For example, Microsoft may bet the house on MFC and COM, and their users have no choice. Their developers have to re-train, re-tool, and rewrite their code. In an open source world, if some development path doesn't meet the needs of the users, it will simply be abandoned. The needs of most users are met because a certain fraction of any large user community will have developers in it that are sufficiently motivated to pick up the torch.
And if a closed source company makes a real blunder, they go out of business and their product generally becomes poorly supported or disappears entirely. Then, I'm stuck with a lot of software written to proprietary APIs and with a lot of learning and training time invested in a system that doesn't exist anymore. That's a big risk for long term software projects.
The difference between closed source systems and open source systems is quite analogous to the difference between central economic planning and a free market. It's ironic that Microsoft, the company that is often held up as the icon of free market success, is actually a huge, centrally planned enterprise, with all the inefficiencies and risks that that implies, both for the company and the customers that depend on it.
So, no, if Linux weren't open source, I wouldn't be using it, and I believe neither would many other people. And (Sun take notice) I think whether something is open source or not should be determined by whether any user can take the source and make a new branch off the existing development, since that, to me, is the essence of open source.
wow you must be stupid.... ctrl+alt+del isn't just a windows thing, you freak, i hope you go to hell so satan can burn your ass with his cock, fucking shitface
Linux would not have come so far without packaging it with all the GNU tools. So a non-free Linux kernal = a non useful operating system. GNU software is a huge part of Linux and it is all free regardless of the Linux kernal.
Not to mention FreeBSD. The movement is bigger then Linux. Linux was just a good kernel, that wouldn't have been as good if it wasn't OpenSource.
So linux rocks, but wouldn't be if it wasn't OpenSorce.
2)What if Ringo never joined the Beatles
3)What if Sonny never met Cher
4)What if Jobs never met Woz
5)What if Monica never blew Bill
Some things just naturaly go together.
Such is Linux and open source.
Linux would be nothing if it wasnt open source. Linus could have never done this by his own no matter what people say. Because it is open source and because he had some help, linux is what it is today and for no other reason.
How about this?
We could have Open Source without Linux.
*but*
We couldn't have Linux without Open Source.
:)
kaniff -- Ralph Hart Jr
So, while Linux isn't the hands-down best OS out there, it certainly has a number of things going for it
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Oh, and who's your wife? Your sister? Incest is bad, you know. Try adding to the gene pool, not ruining it.
Spirilis
the real at&t mix
Free / Open Source software existed long before the creation of Linux, and would probably be nearly as popular even if Linux did not exist.
Apache and Perl are two free software projects that have reached far more people than Linux, and has garnered more acceptance in corporate circles.
People wouldn't engage in what is one of my favourite passtimes, looking for profanities and the like in the sources i.e..
/* This way doesn't require any declaration for ANSI to fuck up */ /* This way doesn't require any declaration for ANSI to fuck up */ /* This way doesn't require any declaration for ANSI to fuck up */ /* This way doesn't require any declaration for ANSI to fuck up */
/* We will NOT put a fucking timestamp in the header here. Every
(sorry.. freebsd system in my case...)
> find . -name "*" -exec grep -i fuck {} \;
struct rx_cache * you_fucked_up = 0;
check_cache (you_fucked_up);
check_cache (you_fucked_up);
We will NOT put a fucking timestamp in the header here. Every time you
abort();
abort();
abort();
abort();
could fuck things up. */
# case the program is fucked, or we guess the wrong signal thread.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Other factors in the success of Linux seem to be overlooked, as it's fashionable to credit the whole success of Linux on the fact that it's Open Source(tm).
In the early 90's, the power of the average PC was on the rise. With the 386 and 486 processor, it became ludicrous to run a single-user real mode operating system on such powerful hardware.
The Internet came into wide use, and the bandwidth to move big blocks of data around became very cheap. Email became "almost free" which made widespread collaboration efforts possible.
With the advent of low-cost CD-rom drives in almost all machines, it became easy to ship around a lot of data.
As the hardware become more and more cheap, it became an 'easy out' for people needing to harness a lot of raw power to just apply all the old designs to the new cheaper hardware. The 70's and 80's designs, developed for expensive proprietary hardware, could be pasted into a project like Linux. (it's no coincidence that Linux developed as a Unix-like project, it filled the hardware void for all that old code).
It fun, and it gets certain Open Source(tm) Evangalists their honorarium fees and plane fair, but the fact that it's Open Source(tm) is only one of many factors that lead to the popularity of a Unix-like OS for PC hardware called Linux.
I just slid over to an alternate universe where Linus Torvalds was hit by a bus in 1990, but everything else from 1990 to 1992 was pretty much the same. Thus in this alternate universe there was a free Unix-compatible kernel (actually several: FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Jolitz BSD).
Many of the BSDers jumped to a proprietary company called BSDI. The alternate RMS, fearing a repeat of the Lisp Machines days when all the free software became proprietary again, jumped into action. He kicked the Hurd hackers off the BSD payroll and managed to hire Bill Jolitz, who was so pissed off at the BSDI founders that he abandoned his old opposition to the GPL. RMS put out version 3 of the GPL, which blessed the BSD advertising clause, when he realized that otherwise the GNU/BSD kernel wouldn't be legal.
Now there was a closed group of folks in the GPL camp, and another closed group of folks in the BSD camp. Releases from both of them were eagerly anticipated, but only the elite could play ... until along came a group of more democratically minded folks that started a project called, as in this universe, Debian. In an attempt to heal the rift between the two warring camps, they named their project ...
Debian GNU/BSD.
Meanwhile the antitrust settlement had split Microsoft into an OS and an application software division, and forced Microsoft to make the MSHTTP spec free (hardly anyone used the web after Microsoft knocked off Netscape in this universe, since they put so many bells and whistles into the spec that no one could write working web pages).
Soon Megasoft Office BSD was out, thanks to porting help from a Scandanavian company named Troll Tech. Within a year, Microsoft (the OS company) had lost significant market share, but every business was forced to buy Megasoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. An idealistic group of folks who found this intolerable founded a project called GNOME.
Most folks thought that the Debian and GNOME efforts would fail, but they actually made unexpectedly rapid progress. Eric Raymond became famous when he wrote a paper that documented this.
Sickness and dementia is what I'm all about, biznatch. J00r an awesome bruffah, and fight the good fight.
It's people like me who will get in your way throughout life, who will stop you from reaching your goals. Try not to let us throw you down, because we will one way or another ;-)
Spirilis
the real at&t mix
If it hadn't been GPLed, it might've been released under a BSD-ish or X-ish license (in fact, I have the impression that the first license Torvalds put on it wasn't the GPL, but was some license of his own, and that he later GPLed it; I don't remember the details of the terms he originally put on it).
I suspect any license that would've made it free-as-in-speech would've been sufficient, although there is the question of whether that would've caused non-free commercial derivatives to spring up, and what effect that would've had.
(When it comes to the original question, my personal suspicion is that it would, indeed, probably not have been a big success had it not been free-as-in-speech (and thus contributed to by a cast of thousands) and free-as-in-beer (and thus available to members of that cast of thousands to put on a machine at home, or at school, or...).)
this is pointless.
how about we simply stop replying to the posts in this particular thread.
this is obviously not going anywhere.
-------------- insert [signature] here
As others have noted, at about the time Linux first appeared, there were several other 'free' or low-cost unix clones making the rounds. In the payware field there were Coherent and Minix (where, at least in their early versions, could run on 8086/8088's which were common at the time). In the freeware field there were a couple of BSD variants that were fairly mature.
It has also been noted that sufficiently powerfull computing hardware became commonly available in the early ninties. I might also note that the RAM shortage of the late eighties tailed off just a few years before the emergence of Linux, which played a part in reducing the price and availability of powerfull computers for the masses.
I would add that a fair amount of publicly available technical literature (Douglas Comer's XINU books, Tennanbaum's book, etc.) were just becomming available in the late eighties, which may also account for some of the impetus (I spent several years, in the early ninties, considering how to write my own OS, reading lots of books and talking with hacker friends. I wanted to design something new, from the ground up, but they suggested that I mimic unix. I was unable to see the wisdom of their words: a year later, most of them were playing around with 0.9x versions of Linux)
Finally, I think the various attempts to unify UNIX in the late eighties/early ninties may have had something to do with Linus' success. Linus himself talked about making the earliest versions of the Linux kernel POSIX compliant, so I think it is safe to say that the ferment of unix standardization had some part in the success of Linux.
All of this said, without the open source aspect I seriously doubt that Linux would have succeeded. Consider the fate of Coherent, which was priced quite reasonably ($99 for a v.7 clone running on comodity hardware with very small resource needs) but was unable to sustain itself. The main strength of Linux is its ability to rapidly address new or unusual hardware and to assimilate new features almost as quickly as they are proposed. Without this adaptability Linux would be hardly worth looking at, and this ability stems directly from the open source.
- Jeff Dutky
If you want some truly new kernal technology, then look into EROS (The Extremely Reliable Operating System) http://www.eros-os.org/
If Linux became an EROS process, like KeyNIX under KeyKOS, then we could see full-blown Tandem-style reliablity on commodity hardware.
Check it out.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Open Source is nice, but it is definately NOT anything that has revolutionized anything. If it had, Windows would have been toppled long ago.
Has anyone else noticed that by far most of the programs (excluding commercial apps) available for Linux are "free" as in free beer, compared to most of the programs for DOS/Windows, which are mostly shareware or crippleware?
Examples:
[dos/win - UNIX (description)]
pkzip/winzip - gzip/zip/bzip2 (file compression)
list - less (text viewers)
Ghost - dd (disk copiers)
4DOS - ksh/bash/tcsh (shells)
XTree Gold - mc (full-screen file managers)
basic text editors in general
compilers / programming tools
This seems to represent a completely different state of mind between DOS/Win developers and Linux developers. I'd like to know why this trend has developed. Any opinions? (Wait a sec... This is slashdot. OF COURSE you have opinions!)
For years, we've known that Windows causes brain damage. Now we have proof!
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
Anyone?
Im betting there isn't one person who got their first copy of Linux based on the fact that you could modify the source code and nothing else. In short, if it was closed source, you all would have downloaded and installed it regardless.
I didn't exclude alternate licenses. The GPL meets the minimum
`freedom' requirement for this sort of endeavor. Indeed, a BSD
licensed Linux may well be further along by this point.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
ctrl+alt+del isn't just a windows thing
Oh you're right, it's also a MS Bob 2000 thing! You have to click Start to shut down too. How many time did you executed the attachment in your incoming emails? Did you ever found the Any key on your keyboard?
Linux sucks because you don't know how it works, right?
Not another effort to equate RMS with the rise of free software!
IMHO, the only significant difference between the real world and a parallel universe in which RMS was never born is the GPL (Emacs not withstanding; VI rules!). IMNSHO, the GPL is evil. It was deliberately designed to be incompatible with everything else and is a huge pain in the butt for many people. One world, one licence, one messiah, eh?
Public domain software has been around as long as computers have. Linux could have made it as public domain software, the same people who gave their work away to make it work would still have done so, even if perhaps some horribly evil corporation might have made the terrible sin of improving their own products with chunks of Linux-related code (I know, I know, none of us could have slept knowing that MS used Linux code to make a better Windows and the Linux community's work improved the lives of most users years ago, instead of just the cherished hacker elite; after all, it's not about helping people, it's about rebellion and communism and programmers making as little as street musicians).
BTW, how did this completely off-topic post get moderated to the top of this discussion? Not a single mention of "if I had to pay for Linux" or "if I couldn't get the source", just an apparently random tribute to a prominent figure in the world of free software.
while "what if" questions are entertaining, and tend to cause enormous amounts of controversy as everyone's supremely biased opinions come flailing out, they are, in all reality, trivial.
/.ers who are, even now, forming strong opinions and typing them out at blinding speed with all the loving care they can muster, i do fell it's necessary to disclaim it all by saying that i do approve of "what if" questions, simply because they are questions. now on to the fun.
;)
before i lace into the collective of
Simply put, "what if" questions are questions dealing with fantasy and nothing more. asking "what if linux wasn't open source" carries about the same amount of importance as asking "what if gandalf's beard had been made of blue cheese"
while there are intricately complex philosophical arguments dealing with this very issue (whether or not we can talk, in a non-trivial manner, about nonexistent entities or situations) the result is usually the answer: no, we cannot. even though it makes for lively and, at times, interesting discussions...the simple truth of it is that such conversations are, by nature, moot.
even more simply: the answer to "What if linux wasn't open source?" and, indeed, every other "what if" question is, "it isn't."
linux _IS_ open source and it doesn't really make much sense to talk about it not being open source.
that having been said, i do believe that any rational discussion of ANY topic between humans is a Good Thing (tm) and that such conversations, irregardless of what they are about, are necessary for the further development of humans in general (and the humans involved, specifically) and i'm sure that no matter how trivial the question behind it all, this particular discussion will have interesting, insightful, informative, humorous (you get the point) posts.
just bear in mind, before you begin aiming your well-polished (and possibly overused) flamethrowers at each other, that the question you are arguing so vehemently over is, in a strictly philosophical sense, completely trivial and of no importance whatsoever
-dk
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
DOS still rules even though its command line, why? cause microsoft made it and microsoft rules
DOS made by microsoft? Try DOS stolen by bill gates.
--Have a Johsonville brat.
I suppose System V Release 2 or so could also be thought of as the UNIX most commercial UNIXes these days derive from, either directly or indirectly, although SVR2's APIs, as noted, largely resemble a superset of V7, with some PWBisms, and some other additions, e.g. shared memory, and some changes, e.g. a different TTY driver "ioctl" interface.
SCO's only charging USD 100 for the license, it appears - and they also may "waive the license fee for a limited number of deserving applicants", where they suggest that "deserving" may include " student, unemployed, disabled, financially challenged, etc."
The sources are, of course, to PDP-11 UNIXes, so to actually run them you'd need a PDP-11, or a PDP-11 simulator.
Why is this flamebait? The entire question is ridiculous and to discuss it is moronic.
Furthermore, we are just NOW in the throws of the revolution. The seeds were planted long ago and they are just now showing their fruits. Wait 5 years before making the statement that Open Source hasn't revolutionized anything. We'll know soon enough, but right now we're too close to see the big picture.
Linux is the second best operating system in existance today (tied with *BSD), and I think Linux will have a very long future because of this. It is also because of this that Microsoft is running scared. It is something they do not control, and something they cannot control. I think we're going to see Microsoft vaporwaring for the next few years to try and detract people from Linux and OS...it is a nesscary evil, and will thankfully be around though the next millenium, it it (and *BSD) will both be the best OS until the day comes that they design the next best OS.
===
Which would you trust a life support system run on WinCE? or a Life support system run on Linux? How about on your pace maker? Would you like your pacemaker to run WinCE? As soon as your heart beat becomes iregular it crashes!
Okay no idea how I got to MS bashing....but....if O.S. dies....WinCE will live, lets hope that doesn't happen.
freeBSD
openBSD
that's where people'd go. Linux is so successful because it filled a niche and because with its opensource model, more people than just Linus worked on it. If it became a non-opensourced OS, it would have had one hell of an uphill battle - a non-commerically-developed closed-source unix (developed by one college student, no less!) competing against all the commerical unixes?
Even if it were made by a business, why would people who could afford a commerical unix that isn't quite a true unix in the purist sense of the world switch over when they already have perfectly good versions and could switch to other commerical ones with a smaller learning curve?
I've been pretty OS agnostic over time. I got my start with Basic 7 (the C128 was a terrific machine). Then I went through the DOS stage... DOS really was a terrible OS, and 16-bit realmode was a terrible platform, so for a long time I went back to the commodore (this was a long time ago...)
But then I went back to DOS... 16-bit C code was still a real pain, but I learned to hack it and started using other compilers... C-- was especially cool...
I tried windows 3.x, really didnt like programming in it, went back to DOS. Eventually I heard of DJGPP and got my first taste of DOS32. When properly set up, DOS32 feels very much like *NIX... And yes, it has long file names.
Back in those days, I was hacking OS bits together. I wrote the DLX dynamic linker, which is still in a decent amount of use by the DJGPP folks, as the basis of an OS-style project. I did some work on threading, and wrote a preliminary bootstrap loader. My real goal was to get a DJGPP-based system running without DOS. I tried Caldera OpenDOS/DRDOS/whatever, got some decent success..
But then I tried Linux... I was quite comfortable with the commandline, as I was already using bash and gcc on a daily basis. Really all I needed to learn to use Linux was how to navigate vim.
Anyways, to the point, I had already myself almost developed an OS kernel of my own. This meant that the Linux kernel, which already did many of the things that I was hacking on, was of a LOT of interest to me... I quickly began becoming familiar with the sourcecode. I've even done some kernel hacking myself, although it's pretty much limited to a video driver or two.
But if Linux were not open-sourced, I personally would have stuck with DJGPP, and finished off my true DOS32 kernel, and probably start using that... I was actually working on a few really neat dynamic linking hacks before I stopped...
I should probably put out an opensource project or two for Linux... Although, the company I'm with will be releasing a few that I head ;)
Enough ranting.
I although these are to different concepts each within different contexts, I really don't see Open Source and Linux *not* going hand in hand. Open source has been around for a long time, GNU was big in its sector, but really didn't have an impact on areas where linux is moving to. Unix was also big but not moving into these sectors (ie windows users). Linux is simply the product that made open source move into the main stream.
I really don't think that open source would be today with out linux. I also don't feel unix would be to day without an open sourced linux. Certain aspects of this movement go from having a drive -- something to motivate people forward. Bill Gates and M$ have been that movement for them. Without that motivation, would linux really have as much support as it does?
-- Moondog
It's sorta like if Microsoft wasn't around. There'd still be a big evil monopoly in place with a different name and we'd all be cursing them...
I guess that T-shirt quote I saw really sums this issue up quite nicely albeit somewhat crudely:
"Same shit different name"
I think that pretty much says it all.
Public domain software has been around as long as computers have. Linux could have made it as public domain software, the same people who gave their work away to make it work would still have done so, even if perhaps some horribly evil corporation might have made the terrible sin of improving their own products with chunks of Linux-related code (I know, I know, none of us could have slept knowing that MS used Linux code to make a better Windows and the Linux community's work improved the lives of most users years ago, instead of just the cherished hacker elite; after all, it's not about helping people, it's about rebellion and communism and programmers making as little as street musicians).
I made this very same point in a comment in "Photogenics To Be Released For Linux" There is nothing about the GPL or Free Software which relates to Communism! If that were the case you should call the pope Communist for redistributing the wealth of donations given to the church for the needy. Or for that matter, you should call those Shriners, driving their petit cars around collecting money for burn victims "Communist." Bullshit!
Communism is a political ideology, and has nothing to do with non-political groups of people organizing together for common cause and purpose. To call RMS a Communist is to promote Fascism. Why? Because that is state sponsored and controlled Capitalism! And I'm guessing that if Free Software, The Shriners, and the Church are considered Communist because members of such share ideas and wealth, then we've just stepped down the sliperly slope toward enacting state sponsored criminalization of such activity. And that IS fascism.
BTW, how did this completely off-topic post get moderated to the top of this discussion? Not a single mention of "if I had to pay for Linux" or "if I couldn't get the source", just an apparently random tribute to a prominent figure in the world of free software.
It's obvious to me, though not directly stated: If Linux hadn't been released under the GPL, but had been released under something close to the Minux license, it would have whithered on the vine while the BSD's and GNU grew up to take it's place today. We would still have Free Software, and Linux would be an unknown afterthought.
Xlib
Microsoft killed[1] Borland. Microsoft killed WordPerfect. Microsoft killed Lotus. Microsoft killed FoxBase and Paradox. Microsoft killed OS/2, the Mac OS, etc.. Microsoft is killing Netscape. Etc., etc., you will be assimilated, etc.. We humans instinctively get uneasy when we view a rampant rise to dominance like this one. Recently, Linux and OSS have just been in the right place at the right time to be blatantly Not MS. Not only because it actually works like it is supposed to, but because it is free. MS has proven itself an expert at destroying products that one must pay money for. But one that is free?
Another thing that happened was the internet. Win[9N][58T] just didn't handle the internet very well. But Linux did. I can be anywhere and have full access to my home machine. I can read my mail from anywhere. And so on. All of those things take work, cost money, and don't work very well anyway with Win[9N][58T].
I think Linux (and *BSD) and OSS are great. But I don't think they would be nearly so publically prominent now without the existence of the factors I mentioned above. (If OSS and Linux hadn't existed, the "rebirth" (G3 era) of Macs might have gotten a lot more press, for instance.)
[1] Def. killed (verb, past tense) subject increased their own market share at the expense of the object's until the business and/or prominence of the object was severely diminished.
Actually, Linux does have a meaning: Linux Is Not UniX. BTW, Linus didn't name it. The guy (can't remember his name, I saw the story here on /. over a year ago) that put Linux on an ftp site in Finland did, calling it Linux, and the name stuck.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Linux is Unix/X86. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Linux will be the only great Open Source OS. It came on the market at the right time, it was usable in 92-93, just when the internet was starting to grow. With out the internet Linux would not be as good as it is today. At this time M$ was just becoming the windows "non"-standard. AS the internet allowed movement of source and binaries, students (like I was) started to work on it. There are three major reasons why techies started working on linux 1> M$ sucked 2> needed networking 3> needed Xwindows. With out the Internet Linux would not be, and with out linux the Internet would not growing as fast int the begining (94-97). Off topic: I want to thank Linus for starting linux but I don't understand the way people turn him into a folk hero. He was at the right place at the right time. The amount of code he wrote is a very small compared the total amount of code. Shaun Savage
If Linux hadn't been GPLed I wouldn't be where I am today, let alone Linux:).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
We cant forget the most importantly that Linux is just a kernel that the GNU and other programs can run on. _Beastie_ whithout a body.. its just a head
The Problem With The Gene Pool Is That There Is No Lifeguard.
find . -name "*" -exec grep -i fuck {} \; creates a separate grep process for each file. find . -name "*" |xargs grep -i fuck will probably be much faster.
MacOS is a lot easier to install than Linux, but easier to use? Not to me. Not the way you get it from Apple anyway. There is no shell. I need a shell. A shell lets me do things that are non-trivial in any GUI I've run into. I want my X server, so I can run graphical stuff remotely. And of course, I need my wmaker dockapps. ;)
And I don't find Mac apps that much easier to use than what I use in Linux. The consistency doesn't give me that much, as far as I can tell. This won't be true for everyone, but it is for me.
I guess if Linux wasn't open source, it wouldn't have existed at all. Sam _____
___________
The GPL is evil? Give me a break. It's one rule: if you take what I'm offering, you have to offer what you've done with it. It's the goddam golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's tit for tat. Quid pro quo. It's just saying that you have to play by the rules.
As Linus said, whoever writes the code gets to make the license. If you really want to live in a world where it's ok to take people's work without giving anything back, then fine. All people should just give to those who gave to them and the GPL would be unnecessary, just like marriage vows to lovers. Guess what, we don't live in a perfect world. So lovers take vows and coders use the GPL.
There are some human beings on this planet who happen to have ideals and actually want to live by them on occasion. If you really dislike dealing with idealists that much, commit a crime and go to prison. You'll be surrounded by plenty of perfectly practical people. If you want to live in the real world, you're going to have to follow a few rules. One of them is that you don't get to do what you want. We all require each other to be at least minimally decent human beings. RMS is trying to get people to be a little more decent than that on just one particular aspect of human life.
The only restriction that the GPL carries is that everyone has to play by the same rules. Simple. That's it. If you want to call that communistic, fine. We all have to play by the same rules that we don't get to murder someone. I guess that that's communistic too. But you know what? We all live in a community.
Oh, and about that windows nonsense and helping the common man. Giving technology to evil men isn't always in the common man's best interests. Sometimes you have forgo small things to get big ones. If you make a slave's life too comfortable he might not fight to be free. It's called the "big picture". I.e. thinking more than five minutes into the future. Nothing is guaranteed in this life, but a world dominated by one corporation is probably going to be inferior to a world where people have more control over their own lives. Microsoft must be destroyed in its current form because it poses a threat to the world. If people suffer a little bit because of that necessity, the world isn't going to fall off its axis. After all, the human race did perfectly well without computers for millenia. A few extra years without a good stable operating system for the masses isn't going to kill us now.
In conclusion, why don't you go off into seclusion and become a hermit and rant your prattle about anything where people actually give to each other being communistic to yourself. This way no one will have to perform the communistic act of listening to you instead of shooting you. Think about it for a minute? What's so evil about a license where the whole of the law is that if you take you have to give?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
You put that very well. Thank you. Oh, and I second the motion: thank you RMS. And everyone else who gave their source away and made this a better world.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Linux wouldnt be named Linux if it wasnt open sourced in the first place.
I suspect not; I don't remember "OS/32" being associated with it, and its file system was UNIXish (and its API UNIX-compatible).
Perhaps you meant Concurrent OS/32? OS/32 was originally a (non-UNIX-compatible) OS from Interdata; Interdata got bought by Perkin-Elmer, was spun off from Perkin-Elmer as Concurrent Computer, and merged with Masscomp (here's a page on their history). It looks as if they're still supporting OS/32, and the machines on which it ran, to some degree, according to the "Latest Facts" page on the Series 3200 on Concurrent's Web site.
(Some of my earliest systems programming work was at a summer job at Interdata, back in 1972; they were located near where my family lived. This was long before OS/32 existed - at the time I was there, some people there were working on an new OS that would add support for disk files that had names.)
Thank you fo saying "Free Software"
Since yesterday I have strarted reading ./ again, and it so easy to notice what a difference a few months have made in the terms that we once used. Everything is "open source" now, I hate to be in the Linux word anymore. I should move to HURD as soon as I can get it working on my computer. Problem is that I will be working on a new filesystem (if we get the money) and so far I only know how to do it on Linux. Die Linux die, please... Force me to brake away.
This is no Flaimbait, but I used NetBSD before I switched to Linux. And thats what I would use if Linux never happend ... Why did I switch then: The Amiga was my machine at that time. No support for the operating system, no drivers for cool hardware, well no cool hardware at all. At this time I tried NetBSD, to compile my kernel was rather cool :-) Some time later I looked at linux, it seemed to have more drivers and the momentum of developers and users.
...
THIS was important, I never wanted to rely on a company getting bankrupt.
Open Source was the fuel, that kept everything going, but the car looked differnt
You seem to be making a post in support of the GPL which has enabled all this free software to develop. But then you call RMS a jerk. RMS invented the GPL for Gods sake. He started all this. That makes him a hero in my book !
linux wasnt open source, we certainly wouldn't have as many freeloading pseudointellectual idiots whining about it like you see on slashdot.
What if AT&T hadn't sued any operating system using the BSD code, back in (93, 94, 95, can't remember exact year)? This a setback for the OS'es, as any AT&T code had to be rewritten. Which was quite a lot, IIRC.
I tried Linux because I was fed up with Windows. I haven't modified or even studied the Linux source. (Well, except once in an unsuccessful attempt to find out what "cause: E000" (or whatever) means when your ISDN line disconnects) and once when I experimented with a higher HZ (didn't see a difference).
So I, personally, don't need access to the source. What I do need is for the thousands of current and potential kernel hackers out there to have access to it so that they can continue to improve it.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Win9x performs brilliantly if implementation, ease of use and compatibility is what you need most. True, it can crash if you decide to remove a CD-ROM while a program is accessing it, and if you download and install binaries indiscriminately, you're bound to end up with viruses. Well, don't do that then. Believe it or not, I've only had windows 98 crash on me once, which was a human error. NT has never crashed on me, or even shown a memory leak. Linux has crashed on me a lot, but that is to be expected if you alter bits of kernel code just to see what it does.
Not only that, the openness of the kernel, and the ever expanding uses that computers are put to virtually guarantees that development and extension will take place for some time to come.
In addition, there are many more high-profile personalities out there (than just ESR) now, that are heavily involved with Linux-based OSS projects.
Linux has gained:
These may strike some as needless distinctions, but it brings attention to the multiple levels of granularity and customizability in the Linux OS system. Some due to factors intrinsic to Linux itself, some due to the benefits and influences from the OSS movement.
Suffice it to say that, while Linux would probably still exist without OSS, it would probably not resemble the Linux we know today. In addition, OSS would still exist without Linux, but it would also bear little resemblence to the OSS community we know today. In either case, we would still be the poorer for not having said symbiosis.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The largest aspect of the gnu/linux success is the openess. It filled a niche when it came out, but so did the bsd's. The difference was that it was easier for users to fix problems in linux than any of the bsd's due to the licensing (gpl). Not that user's couldn't fix bugs in bsd, just that it wa easier under the gpl. This (and a number of crazed advocates) is the reason everyone is looking to linux instead of a bsd. ------------------ beware the penguins. there comming. -----------
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy
For one I dont think major Linux Kernel Developers really want to go with Hurd, just ask them. Have a look at Alan Cox answers published not long ago. If you develope a new O/S, wouldn't you start with the kernel first?
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
There are 3 known ways to write an OS.
1 : Do it all yourself.
2 : Make it OSS and get a few thousand people to help out.
3 : Form a company and pay top dollar to some 1st rate programers.
Linus wasn't a rich man ( and won't be until Transmeta goes public ) so he couldn't have bought talent.
Linus has claimed about %5 of the Kernel as his own coding and the rest is just packing in other people's code. He couldn't have done it all by himself.
Therefore OSS was his only option and frankly if Linux had a BSD/X11 stile license it wouldn't have caught up to freeBSD in the area of contributing developers. Back when Linux was the new OS on the block ( 1992-3 ) it had no technical advantages over BSD at all. Only the GPL ( which was adopted in under a year of development to replace the draconian "Share this source and make no money" license Linus had used at 1st.
Even now the technical advantages over FreeBSD are relatively minor and come with tradeoffs. I.e. More drivers for lower network performance.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
It was a cheap ($99) non-unix unix-like OS for the x86 that came out in 1989/90 or so.
Anyway it was closed source and today it's extinct.
Of course two samples (linux and Coherent) are not statisticaly significant, but I find it interesting that the closed source cheap OS died while the Open Source Free OS thrived on the same hardware and in the same time frame.
Keep on Keeping On
Not that it matters too much, but it's never too late for proper English. :)
BTW, what kind of troll moderator didn't mark down the guy who stuck in lines of
's, screwing up the comment page? My $#@$# slashdot is giving him +1 because its "long". Please fix.
Visit
Linux wouldn't have gotten even 500,000 users by now if it were closed source. And the OSS movement really wouldn't have gotten far at all without it.
If Linux had not been open sourced (I believe that the GPL was a particularly critical choice, for reasons I'll get into below), I doubt very much that we'd even be hearing about it. Possibly there'd be something else that would have been open source that we'd have heard about, possibly (but I suspect not) BSD would have filled the void. That's just a guess, of course.
Linux got a lot of very powerful (not in the financial/political sense, but in the technical and later marketing sense) mindshare concentrated around it fairly quickly. IMHO, that is why it survived and thrived -- there were a lot of people out there who were attracted to that kind of project, who had the oomph needed to make it work.
BSD has, as I see it, three disadvantages from this standpoint:
1) The development model is closed -- it's a very tight core of people. That makes it hard for new people to jump on board. The BSD folks seem to like to tout it as an advantage. I don't think so. Whatever advantage there may be in having a small core of very highly qualified people and not having to worry about "substandard" code is more than outweighed by the sheer creative energy and new ideas unleashed by the openness of the Linux development process.
2) BSD's been around a lot longer and has gotten a bit stale. This partly related to (1), but partly it's also the natural tendency of something that has been around for a long time getting tired. I don't intend this as harshly as it comes across (and I'm well aware that it sounds nasty, although that's not my intent). The BSD folks are dedicated and very good, but they've been working on the same thing for a long time (in their various camps). Linux doesn't have a lot of baggage, and it's a lot easier to try new things. Of course, this implies that in 5-10 years Linux will be in much the same position. Probably it will. Linus tries to stave it off (he said this somewhere a year or two ago) by being picky about what goes into the kernel, and the greater turnover of developers is probably also healthy, but it's also not the be-all and end-all of systems. Eventually it's going to get tired too, and somebody else will come up with something better.
3) The GPL. It's really a finely tuned instrument for maximizing code availability and minimizing the destructive kind of forking. This, more than anything else, is RMS's greatest contribution. The really nifty thing about the GPL is that it ensures that all changes that anyone wants to distribute to anyone are made available to everyone, but it also ensures that nobody has any premature veto over anything. Linus can decide what he'll put into the Linux kernel that he distributes, but he can't stop anyone from distributing something else. Likewise, somebody else can't take the Linux kernel, make useful but proprietary changes, and force a split (particularly when other people make other changes with incompatible licensing, and force people to choose). The first effect ensures that Linus stays on his toes; he can't ignore something very useful that someone else has done just because he doesn't like that person -- he can ignore the specific bit of code, but if enough people like it, he'll eventually have to allow in something that does what's desired. It also exposes all new ideas to the light of day very quickly, where the market -- not the "owner" -- can evaluate them. The second ensures -- in a PRACTICAL sense -- that things can't get so incompatible that everything gets out of hand.
Whatever the theoretical risks of forking (which are much overblown, to put it mildly), the GPL is probably the one form of public license that allows for wide-open public participation but really does have great immunity against forking. As Vinod put it in Halloween (2?), being able to fix bugs or add features -- and then contributing them back, and seeing them get public use -- is very empowering.
It's very nice to be able to sit back and say "I have some code in the Linux kernel that millions of people are using" even if it's some trivial little thing (in my case, it's something like a 5-line patch to speed up argv handling in exec()). I suspect that that factor has a much bigger part to play in the early success of Linux than many give it credit for -- there was nothing else around at the time that did that.
Then we have another feature of the GPL -- the Great Equalizer. Some people say that the GPL is very business-unfriendly, since it doesn't allow for proprietary enhancements, and that the BSD license should be preferred on those grounds. I think not; the fact that your competitor is under the same constraints makes for a very equal situation. Under the BSD license, if you want to add value and resell it, you almost have to make your changes proprietary, because otherwise your competitor can take your public changes and put them into a proprietary product. The GPL forbids this; you can make a useful change and contribute it back with no fear that your competitor can use your own work against you. So everyone is equal under it; nobody can steal an advantage by means of hiding information; you need to execute better.
There's no such thing as complete freedom; there do have to be basic ground rules to ensure some basic level of cooperation, or else there are too many people who are looking to twist things to their short term advantage. That's where the GPL excels. And that, I think, is a big part of why Linux got where it is today. That, and executing well.
The real question is: What if Linux applications (such as X, sendmail, and anything else we all use) werent open source?
I use open sourced software because its free, i can compile it (so it usually works), and because theres a lot of it.
So in about 40 years we hit day #7 and bad stuff happens? Obviously there must be some magic day when it all goes down according to you then...
That wouldn't happen to be January 18, 2038, would it?
Let's just hope he gets a 64 bit time_t by then.
Uh, isn't the obvious answer "BSD would be what linux is now" ?? It WAS the first "open source" unix.
Other then that, Solaris had been dropping their prices to get more people to run solaris on x86 machines, so I would guess Solaris would be popular, because even though it's proprietary and not free, GNU makes sure all the tools and such are (and are easier to develop for)..
my $0.02 worth...
You know, this is pretty funny really. I wish it weren't moderated down, because it is a great example of either:
:-). I wish the Linux community would be a bit thicker skinned about mindless attacks. Words won't stop the OSS juggernaut.
:-D
1) Terrible advocacy style
or
2) Sharp witted satire of a windows luser
As bad advocacy, it is an object lesson for all us zealots about respecting other people OS decisions (however wrong they might be
As a comedy piece, it's pretty entertaining in a sort of Dilbert Hole way (damned cease and desist orders). "colon*forward*slash"? Not a very observant DOS user. But, I suppose that's somewhat redundant.
cheers
The synergy resulting from the simple feeling you get from using and helping develop open source software is what drives it on. It's like asian firms giving shares(which quickly caught on elsewhere...), except it's that idea cubed!
It's the nurturing feeling you get when you toil and labour with something but see it grow and know that you were a part of it all. Not many people can say that about closed source, except CTOs.
And it could well be applied to a lot of other things we do today. All it needs is visionaries.
eg: SSADM. Anyone else ever seen how closed and proprietary systems design can be? But no-one's stepped in yet to make it better, because all the attempts at bettering it start from the closed frame of mind.
How can any of us ask a question like that?
Even without Linux, Open Source would have still gained popularity. Open Source isn't about what OS we prefer. "It's about freedom baby, yeah!" If we hadn't have had Linux we would have used something else.
Without Linux, free software would have taken a few more years. However, it would have come. Linux has no major advantages over Hurd other than being there a few years sooner (Hurd shipped *much* later instead of a *little* later largely because development slowed, and then almost ceased, with the growth of Linux).
While this will sound more cynical than it's really intended to, I think the "second wave" of Linux users--the hackers outside universities who had little or no Unix experience but were willing to learn--gravitated toward Linux because (a) it was free, (b) it was powerful (unlike Minix) and (c) it had a dynamic presence (unlike free BSD variants, which really didn't leave the university until after Linux had become visible).
I appreciate the value of open source software, both tools and OS, but I think that value to the majority of users is often overstated by proponents (particularly here on Slashdot, where overstatement is the natural order). For may users, just knowing the software is open source is a source of comfort; even so, in practice many of the "second wave" users (and I'd say a majority of the "third wave" that's been coming due to the buzz of the last 18 months or so) rely on the "core team" to make changes and updates to Linux's kernel and core utilities. I don't. I do kernel recompiles, but--like a lot of end users, I suspect--only when I need to reconfigure something in the OS that can only be set up by doing that. I generally only run production kernels.
Having watched both for a while now, I don't feel I'm going out on a limb by saying that Linux's development process isn't any faster than that of a "closed" OS like BeOS if you stick just to what the respective teams have released as production quality. The difference is that you can see into the development process with Linux, and potentially participate in it in a way that you couldn't with a closed OS.
The question is, though, how many people are coming to Linux because of that "transparency", and how many are coming because of the price? Slashdot's audience is likely skewed to the hacker side--and even so, it's worth noting that a common refrain here when Red Hat's "official distribution" is mentioned is "Why pay that when you can get it for $2 at Cheapbytes?"
Linus is on record as stating
If BSD had not had the legal issues, he would have used BSD.
But, these 'what if' games are rather useless.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Not another effort to equate RMS with the rise of free software!
RMS is largely responsible for the current rise of Free Software. Period. Without him Linus and the BSD folks wouldn't have had the tools necessary to write the Linux kernel, and rewrite out all that AT&T code in BSD. Face it, without the compiler and userspace tools written by the FSF and RMS I suspect that the BSD movement might have died under the weight of AT&T's lawsuit.
IMNSHO, the GPL is evil. It was deliberately designed to be incompatible with everything else and is a huge pain in the butt for many people. One world, one licence, one messiah, eh?
Say what you will about your distaste for the GPL, but without RMS's hard work across nearly a fallow decade lacking Free Software development in the '80s, this movement just wouldn't be viable. In a large measure, his hard work responsible for your access to Linux and BSD!
[...]it's about rebellion and communism and programmers making as little as street musicians[...]
Heh. I'd like to point out that one of my previous guitar teachers was/is a street musician who used to earn (he's since moved from the city) significant money performing in Harvard Square. I mean several hundred dollars a night on a hot weekend. He augmented this with cafe, local radio performances, touring, and teaching to earn a very high standard of living. Why? Because he is a damn good musician and performer. The point? I don't think Alan Cox, Linus Torvalds, RMS, or any of the other well known Free Software programmers are going hungry. In fact, I bet that at any time if they wanted to go on holiday they could scrounge up plenty of money to go play in Europe, The Bahamas, or anywhere else fun. This argument is meaningless.
BTW, how did this completely off-topic post get moderated to the top of this discussion? Not a single mention of "if I had to pay for Linux" or "if I couldn't get the source", just an apparently random tribute to a prominent figure in the world of free software.
This is your only valid argument. You know, I really should have tied a closing argument to the question at hand: "Where would Free Software be without Linux," but I thought my point was obvious. I met RMS promoting GNU long before Linux and 386BSD hit the scene... if Linux hadn't taken off because Linus had chosen some lame license, we would all be running GNU/HURD or BSD. Linus got a functional kernel in at the right time, and he chose an open development model that became popular among a large number of developers. But the BSD and HURD scene was moving along too... it was just a matter of time.
However, I didn't make that clear. And I'm not so sure I do deserve a score 5 on that post... honestly, I think Slashdot has been having some serious moderation problems lately because of the expansion of moderation to the general readership community. Too many poorly written, simplistic and politically correct posts have been moderated up to the very top while intelligent off-beat posts lie fallow. I think this is because everyone posts and moderates so quickly that anyone who spends the time to write and edit their post before committing winds up a good hundred messages below -- where no moderators travel. This is a serious problem... maybe the meta moderation system should allow meta moderators to not only value if a given post has been fairly moderated, but also if the total score to a post is reasonable as well. This way meta-moderators who looked at my score 5 and thought that maybe it was scored a bit too high could in some way resolve that problem. Either that or I saw someone suggest that maybe we should hold off on letting moderators score a post for the first 30 minutes or so... I like that idea too.
Verb tenses people! Does anyone want to start another grammar war?
My oh my.
Was Linux the reason that Open Source has come so far? I can honestly say that a LARGE part of this comes from all the work done on the REST of the Operating System, not just Linux. A Kernel without all the supporting libraries, and compilers, and applications is almost completely useless. When the GNU Operating System was applied using the Linux kernel, THAT is when things began moving forward. Many people forget this fact. As kernel features increased, so did the number of applications that were ported to Linux. That is what sparked the growth of Linux into the huge creation it is today. Without that drive by those more interested in tinkering with code, and without the Linux distributions which gathered all this open source code together and then released it, Open Source, and Linux wouldn't have become more than a footnote in the history of the computer industry. Because of this, the OLD distributions such as Slackware were the reason for all of this success. Redhat, SuSE, Debian, Caldera, all of these evolved later, with Redhat being the key to getting Linux into the "public eye".
If you think the FSF isn't a political movement, you haven't read much of what RMS has written. Go down to the FSF homepage and really read about how he would prefer a world in which programmers are barely scraping by, like street musicians, since money ruined everything.
The core of communism is the coercive redistribution of wealth without regard to your contribution. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. If that doesn't sum up GPL'd software, I don't know what does.
The GPL applies the coercive force of the government (specifically, threat of legal action) to prevent anyone from reusing GPL'd source in anything except other GPL'd software. Thus GPL development is a closed system in which all contribute what they can, all share equally in the product (regardless of contribution), and none can hold back his own work for profit.
BTW, I'm not a fascist, my views are closer to libertarianism and anarchism. I'm not against sharing, I'm against coercively and deceptively leveraging others' work to further your political ideals against their own best interests. I'm against newspeak where "free" means "you have to give your work away, too."
My gifts don't come with strings attached.
Solaris, SCO, AIX, Ultrix, A/UX (sorta. When did this die?), Xenix, Irix, AT&T Unix, yada, yada, yada.
Did any of these run on a 386 seven years ago?
That, besides being Open Source, might make some difference.
That is a good analogy: an organization that brainwashes people to believe that they have a monopoly on morality, then demands "gifts" so you can be moral too (remember, usually when you donate money to a church, it isn't going to the poor, it's going to the priests).
If linux was not open source we would all be running FreeBSD or OpenBSD.
I am a VB/VC++ developer.
Every windows machine I have ever used (since '92) has needed to reboot (either crashed or started behaving oddly) daily. Losing 2-10 hours a week due to reboots is unacceptable.
And a reinstall on average every 1-2 months!
Installation :
Windows (9x/NT depends on the job)
Office
Visual Studio.
My Mac (which I develop on) needs to be rebooted about weekly.... Reinstalls once every other year or so.(I upgrade the OS more often than I need to re-install.)
Linux, don't know yet, it's on order from LinuxPPC.com.. but I"m hoping it's more acceptable.
[ machines from Dell, Compaq, Gateway, and Homebrewed... (the homebrewed has worked best!)
Myddrin
Xenix did.
And why would MS want to spend the resources producing products for a platform who's users have the appearance of hating everything Microsoft? What would be the point in writing that software?
Yes, yes, yes. I am not a programmer. I am a sysadmin. I write scripts - I don't code. And I don't give a damn about GPL vs BSD or spend much thought on the free beer/free speech debate. The reason I started using Linux and OpenBSD is that my budget sucked. I had needs and no resources - and enough curiosity and time to look at a new OS. OpenBSD worked. Linux worked. And I knew I didn't have to spend close to $1000 on NT Server, which would have been prohibitively slow on the spare P133/48 that I had. What IS appealing about Open Source is not a moral stand against Capitalism or Microsoft - though I do enjoy the rhetoric - is that when there's a problem, there's also a ton of people around the globe who will fix the problem fast. IIRC, this summer there was a bug in the kernel regarding a missed call to free() that Alan Cox found and fixed in six (SIX!) hours. Amazing. I have found tons of support in newsgroups and how-to pages, and I know that I've solved problems faster than I could have using NT or Solaris or Irix. That makes justifying to my boss the choice of a free OS a no-brainer. The Linux and *BSD projects have a rabid, devoted following, but that does not guarantee that the products will be usable- look at the AmigaOS. What Linux and *BSD do have is diversity; the fact that there are ports for almost every processor tells me not that the development team is fragmented but that the team is committed to gaining acceptance. My message is that Open Source software is not just a novelty with appeal to programmers. There are a lot of us parasites that will use it because it works ( and only if it works and is supported). Keep up the good work, but don't spend too much time thinking about the revolution. -jpg
-jpeg
What?
If Linux wasn't open source it might look like QNX.
QNX (pronounced q-nix) is a posix compliant, unix like, real time, networked operating system. At the moment it is probably technically superior to Linux, at least in the area of distributed network sharing and processes and scalabilty.
It is powerful.
It is nimble.
It is small.
It is scalable.
It is large.
It runs on x86.
It has a small market share.
It is relatively unheard of.
It is expensive.
The question is - what sort of *impact* would Linux have today if it weren't Open Source? Well, the impact Linux has today is for being the anti-Microsoft. The times has come for a serious competitor to the Windows monopoly but the field of potential competitors is littered with the fallen. MacOS, amigaDOS and Atari's TOS were/are all good Oses but they were all wedded to specific hardware. DOS/Windows would run on any machine which was reasonable IBM-compliant and there were a lot of manufacturers of IBM-compatible computers. I've often wondered what would have happened if Apple had ported their MacOS to Intel machines: The simplicity of the Mac GUI with the ubiquitousness of IBM-compatibles. That would have made for an interesting Windows-War. DR-Dos and OS/2 were both written for Intel chips and thus were better positioned as Microsoft rivals. Both were killed by aggressive, possibly monopolistic, business practices. As one vendor is quoted in Calderathin's "Statement of Fact" DR-Dos would have to be offered for free for the vendor to afford to offer it in place of MS-DOS because of the pricing structure of the MS Windows license. From this we can assume that only a free operating system could hope to become the anti-Microsoft, something that Microsoft couldn't price out of the market. In that respect if not Linux than one of the free versions of BSD or even GNU if they ever get a working kernel could have become the anti-Microsoft. Linux's impact comes from it being free and from having a large and aggressive evangelizing fandom. What differentiates Linux from the various flavors of BSD Oses is the extent that Linux was born and grown on the Internet. It has been a community project from the start. From what I've read about BSD it sounds like they tended to be developed in-home or at least by a close group. With Linux anyone could take a whack at it. This could have happened if Linux were public domain but it could have resulted in a lot of incompatible flavors, too. Someone needed to stand in front and say what is "Linux,"as Torvalds has, and I don't think he could have done that without the GPL. By licensing Linux Torvalds could assert his "ownership" of the code and keep it from splintering, while the open nature of the GPL license make it community-friendly. Without the GPL Linux would have remains just a curiosity of a privileged few. But the greater impact on Linux , I would argue. has been the Internet.
Hey Anonymous, That was good. I couldn't stop laughing! Either you are a good kidder or you work for M$ HA..HA. HA.
Free software has everything to do with communism! It is just that your definition of the word is WRONG. Communism is not just the political ideology that you speak of. It has other meanings, a dictionary might be useful. Communism is the process of complete sharing. Our entire educational system is based on it. Without communism every individual would have to start everything from scratch. Imagine what high school would have been like it you had to create trigonometry by yourself. By using already established norms, you are participating in communism.
If you really want to see how dependant society is on communism, try reading Robert Merton's, "The Normative Structure of Science." Maybe then you will decide to retract your statement because you will see that Open Source and Free Software purely define what communism is.
The "Communism" that you speak of is the leftist political definition of the word. It just has become a word with strong negative connotations. However, ideally a communist society has the same aspects as the communism of ideas. The individual is removed from recognition. The product is supreme. Reading through all the articles here, people talk and talk about how Linux would be nowhere without everyone's participation. People who go and change a few lines of code don't expect personal recognition they expect product feedback. What can be done to make the PRODUCT better? That is the goal of open source. In fact open source( free software ) solely depends on anonymous inquiry to survive!!
- anonymous contributor
"If when you look into a mirror, you see a relection, you are missing the point!"
Hey, I have! Yea, you rool!
1) Lots more of us would be using HURD or (Free|Open|Net|*)BSD. 2) Linus wouldn't be so famous. 3) He could be a lot better off ;-)
Linux is part of a process. It isn't the whole process, or may not be the most important part of the process, but it has made a huge difference, and will do for a long while to come. Eeyore
I'm not a Windows apologist, but I do think that the OS has it's uses. Anyway, this goes without saying but: Your mileage may vary :)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
As a long time user of micro-computers, I'm a very firm believer that there is no such thing as a revolution in this business. Usually, it is nothing more than a step of evolution which got good press.
A few common examples of "revolutionary" computers and the evolutions which led up to them:
Macintosh: Decended DIRECTLY from Lisa and PARC stuff. Also, in the consumer market, check out the Epson QX-10 with Valdocs, an early What-you-see operating and working environment.
Amiga: Any number of hardware graphics and sound subsystems which existed LONG before Amiga put them together.
Anyway, to my point. There were some interesting available source things that substantially pre-date the current Open Source movement.
My first "big" computer was a Heathkit H-100 (kit version of the Zenith Z-100) which I purchased in 1983, and didn't really retire until 1989 or so. 8088 and 8085 processors (Dual processors, not like you would think now, however), 5.25" floppies. Ran MS-DOS but it was NOT an IBM compatable. It was a very different design and it was in design concurently with the original IBM PC.
This was an Open Hardware system. When first shipped, the system came with a nice set of technical manuals (this was later dropped, a few owners thought it was required reading and went mad, I think). The entire main board, the video board, and the floppy controller were documented and detailed with very useful schematic diagrams and written circuit descriptions. Every chip was socketed on the main board. The Boot ROM source code was provided.
When the system first shipped, it had two operating systems, MS-DOS v1 and CP/M-80 v2.2 (for the 8085 processor). One very facinating feature of this system which was common at the time but nearly forgotten now was the concept of boot ROMs. The H/Z-100 used the boot ROM to load the OS, ONLY. The BIOS, something which has come to mean "ROM" on modern PCs, then ment the thing that tied the OS kernel (the part provided by MS or Digital Research) to the specific hardware. Unlike the modern PC (well, 32 bit OSs are kinda changing this), the BIOS of the Z-100 was in RAM, not ROM, loaded at boot time.
This lead to some rather interesting possibilities. One could modify the BIOS to support new hardware or alternate hardware configurations. I modified both CP/M and MS-DOS v1 (I *think* I did MS-DOS v2, don't recall for sure, however) to support four 5.25" floppy drives, and modified the hardware to support both 40 track and 80 track (the "high capacity" of the day) floppy drives. I'm not aware of anyone making commercially/publicly available "reved" BIOSs, nor do I think it would have been legal under the license agreements, nor am I aware of any other users other than me who ever touched the BIOS source code, but I would suspect that this BIOS code availablity might have helped with the number of OSs that ended up being supported on the H/Z-100 (MS-DOS v1 ->3.1, CP/M-80 v2.2 and 3.0, CP/M-86 (two different companies produced this) MPM-86 (again, two different companies), Concurrent DOS, UCSD p-System. These are just the OSs that *I* had (although, I don't know of any others that were available). At least FOUR radically different OS families, WOW!
This was an Open System. The only part of the system which wasn't open was the data separator card of the hard disk controller set (the HD controller was a two card set -- the controller itself and the data separator. Apparently, Zenith managed a few things on the data separator they were very proud of, and refused to document it, although they DID document the controller. Go figure. Of course, the card I ended up doing some interesting mods to was the data separator card, which required some interesting reverse engineering, but that's another story. 8)
This wasn't a unique trait of the H/Z-100. At that time, both CP/M and MS-DOS included an assembler, which gave a standard, baseline development tool. Quite a few other systems and machines included BIOS source. I remember having earned great praise when I altered the driver code for a Corvus hard disk to make it turn into drives A: and B: after boot so a very slow floppy app could be moved to a hard disk (this would have been in 1983).
This idea of providing BIOS source appears to have been lost when IBM put the BIOS in ROM, and later versions of DOS lost the included assembler.
At the time, there were quite a few other things that more closely resembled Open Source than this "available source" of the BIOS. At the time, there was a very substantial "public domain" software movement. Granted, there weren't any real apps in the public domain, but there were some pretty cool utilities. This seems to have died with the introduction of "Shareware" and the loss of a "universal" development language on the PC (alternately, one could look at this as the boom of alternative programming languages to the standard, OS supplied assemblers).
Anyway, I guess if there is a point to this, I would say there are two relevant to the Open Source movement. One, is it isn't really a totally new concept. Two, the previous examples of things similar to Open Source faded out for various reasons, it would probably be foolish to assume that Open Source is here to stay without continued effort from its advocates. I think people barely noticed the loss of source code in the mid-1980s.
Nick.
Interestingly, it does not even _force_ programming freedom in the fullest sense. I've written RMS about the 'corporate loophole' I found in the GPL, to get his opinion. His take on it is this: he's not at all happy that corporations can take GPLed code and internally develop it with all the unfree frills and trappings like NDAs and such, only 'freeing' the code upon release- which is something he accepts can happen- but he does not think it is overly significant, because he figures that truly free development (and free exchange of information) will be able to outperform development efforts hindered by the desire to make their programmers unfree.
I can live with that. I think it's a very serious concern to have the everpresent potential of forkin' corporations around trying to influence things in greedy ways and cause confusion and intentional incompatibility, but I can't deny that personally I'd be with Stallman, sharing information, so his view that free cooperation will beat unfree manipulation is something I can happily strive to _make_ realistic. That is, after all, what I want to do with my life, so what's the big disaster if it's not being done in a protected environment? Might as well just work to prove Stallman right, rather than work to keep corporations from abusing the GPL system in an inefficient way.
I think that a very important factor is that it is relatively easy to get a (good) patch into the Linux kernel and utilities. Compare that to the closed developer groups that exist with the BSDs and the NIH arrogance of the GNU people (sorry RMS, but they usually don't even bother to reply to mail reporting a bug or containing a patch).
The ability to write to the Linux code base as well as being able to read it has meant that people have seen their stuff go into the source which is a nice pat on the back. This then encourages them to do it again, and again, and again, ...
I won't pretend that this is the only reason for Linux's popularity but is one reason why it has attracted such a a large & loyal developer base.
How about newspeak where "free" means "your work belongs to your owner. The contents of your _mind_ belong to your owner. You don't have a right to any of it because you chose to sign it away..."e -information. Some versions of freedom are just plain better than others. Though I admit that isn't an argument to appeal to an anarchist ;)
That is the current situation of corporate programming. The fellow being sued because the contents of his mind belong to the company is a Texan who had a bright idea at home, and found that he no longer had any right to ideas of his own when they might make the company a profit.
_That_ is what RMS is against. Unless you are some sort of bizarrely anticorporation libertarian, you're arguing for a situation where it's less and less feasible to produce 'gifts' or 'work' unless you align with a powerful entity such as a corporation, which pays you in exchange for using your head as farmland for growing its ideas in- effectively, this viewpoint suggests the next life-form to take over the planet Earth will not be robots or AIs running amok, it will be the collective entity, corporations: legally given the status of entities, not subject to the same rules as humans, and power-grabbing as fast as they can, with Homo Sapiens Individualus set to go the way of the Neanderthal.
Which is _quite_ a digression, frankly, but it all bears directly upon your views of what freedom is. The GPL and all that goes with it are there for a particular result: in effect, it is for giving the most power to individuals. It did not appear in a vacuum, or from a situation of individuals sharing freely in public domain: while that was happening there was no need for a GPL. Instead, it appeared out of a situation where all development and research HAD BEEN sucked into totally restricted corporate forms. This is simple history, and the seed of the GPL was what happened over LISP machines, a corporate fight over AI that wrecked the MIT AI lab (a haven for public domain), leaving it lifeless. Stallman essentially swore, "never again", and the result became the GPL. It is not for freedom-in-every-sense. It is for freedom-for-individuals-to-hack-together-and-shar
I actually think that lots of people would love to have native port of IE because they simply realize that IE is so much superior to Netscape stuff. /. typical "political correctness"
One reason it is not being mentioned often is this
http://www.statmarket.com/SM?c=Operating_System
Linux 0.23% This chart shows the operating systems that Internet surfers are using. Stat of the week 05/24/1999 Lots of Noise, but not Numbers on Linux. Linux as an alternative operating system has been creating quite a stir in the Press. But, how many Internet surfers actually operate within the Linux environment? According to StatMarket, which monitors over 28 million daily visitors to over 83,000 independent Web sites, the Linux operating system has experienced 37% growth since the beginning of 1999. The percentage of Internet surfers using Linux is currently a whopping 0.22%, up from 0.16% in January of this year.
The only reason we use linux is because we like the idea of an open source os. Let's face it, the kernel has some good design elements, but does it really compare to Solaris, BSDi, or even OpenBSD? Only after so much work can linux be considered good enough for business use and we still don't know if people will pick it up. Also, why don't you look at some other small alternative os projects that are closed source. For instance Beos. Sure its a good idea, but how do you think they are doing financially?
The radfems used to say "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" (this is called IRONY, in case you haven't heard of it). Ya see, fish'n'bikes are only vaguely related due to the quote itself, dig? ...just like linux being OSS is only incidentally related to its' success.
UNIX is essentially cryptic and antique - for most purposes no different from MVS, if you've heard of that. (A more charitable person might say that they are both mature and capable.) BUT, linux, and other linux-derived opsystems, is FREE and it WORKS. So the point is I can make money to feed the babies without any danger of going to jail for stealing intellectual props. My net is connected to 28 non-profit hospitals - ALL of them use linux for basic networking tasks. OSS is only relevant because that is the venue that allowed Linus to create linux - it's not something that any of these hospitals choose their OS for.
On the other claw, the biz linux usrs like me are now quite hot on OSS. So you could say linux legitimized OSS, when the BSDs and GNUsofts alone could not. And of course I never considered the BSDs before linux (those insufferable unix bigots cheese off most people in the biz world) but now I might use them here 'n there... probably not, though, since I can use linux instead, and linux is not an intolerant religion like BSD.
`rm -r /cdrive/windows/*`;
print "I AM FREE\N";
In these books, Eric Raymond clarified some of the aspects that make people write open source software. And these aspects do not meet Windows. Even if it were totally open-sourced, even if the Microsoft mentality was different about closed-sourcing, I don't think it would get momentum to surpass Linux, because the programmers would not get the satisfaction, self-esteem, bragging rights or whatever you call it that they get when making products for "the idealistic operating system".
That's a sense of feeling, not an objective issue. Would you waste your talented skills with a company that poses as the real-world Big Brother?
Neither would I. Indeed, I make all efforts to be completely Windows-independent.
Patola
Patola (Claudio Sampaio)
Unix System Administrator
After all, learning from "open" programs is not a privilege of programmers. It can be shared by graphic artists, novelists (from adventure games, open-licensed books) and many other kind of people. And the average user, curious just about everything, likes to fiddle with that. He can even learn to program, but that is not that which matters most.
Don't forget, part of the success of games like Doom and Quake was due to their openness and flexibility to incorporate hacks, sounds, graphics and extra pieces. And nobody would say that Quake is something of interest only to a developer.
Of course, most of my examples were games, and I am somewhat lazy to think about other things. But I am sure you can figure it out.
Patola
Patola (Claudio Sampaio)
Unix System Administrator
Yeah, I want to buy QuakeII for Linux every time I see it at one of the various computer chains. I won't because it isn't open source(from everything I've read). I didn't switch to Linux because it is free(I make enough $$ so cost is inconsequential), but because it was open source and of the anecdotal stories of it's stability compared to Windows. So, if I'm going to support the open source movement (however, small my contributions may be) than Carmack won't get my money until I can "see the source". Simple as that.
Other factors in the success of Linux seem to be overlooked, as it's fashionable to credit the whole success of Linux on the fact that it's Open Source(tm).
I find it bizarre that many of the posts in this debate, including yours, have assumed that Linus Torvalds's decision to make Linux free software[1] was some sort of marketing gimmmick. Let's be clear: had Linux been closed source it would not exist as a useable option.
Writing an OS isn't that hard. Many universities consider it a suitable final year computer science project. The result is a fun toy to show to your friends. Scaling from that to a useable system is what's hard.
How could Linux succeed had it been closed source?
Impossible. How does you write drivers for hardware you don't own? And even working full time there just aren't enough hours in the day for a single person to bring Linux to where it is today.
Well then, the established UNIX vendors, in particular SCO for UNIX on intel, eat him for breakfast. They already have customers and a product and he doesn't.
As to the other points you raise
Sure. After the 386 it made sense to write serious operating systems for the PC. And companies did, consider SCO for example (or XENIX, anyone remember that?). But the economics of making a commercial OS are very different to those of a free software project. It doesn't make much sense for a UNIX vendor to go after the PC desktop market: MS have it sewn up nice and tight, there are easier markets elsewhere and no potential for profit in the short term. Linux could only do that because it doesn't (didn't?) need to turn a profit. Similarly a corporate UNIX vendor doesn't need to support all the zillions of wacky PC devices out there - you just tell your customers what hardware to buy. Fine for business, not so great for the home user who bought a Windows box and wants to try something different.
But isn't this mainly an advantage for free/open source software?
[1] Obviously, the Open Source marketing campaign didn't exist in those days.
It would not have worked out at all. If Linus hadn't distributed it for free, it would have died within months of its creation. Simple as that. Do you know anyone who would _buy_ an operating system that essentially originally only supports the hardware Linus Torvalds owned back in 1991?
When Unix was first developed, AT&T was in a legal catch-22. They couldn't block the release of the technology, and they couldn't market it (They lost two separate lawsuits on the two issues). The answer was simple: Sign this non-disclosure agreement and give us money ($100 for universities, $10K+ for companies). In return you would get a dump of a working system, including source code. Although it wasn't a GNU license, justabout anybody who had UNIX had the source code, and you could share the code with anybody who had a license (i.e. just about everybody with UNIX) -- all you had to do is prove you had a license. The reason why UNIX gained popularity in the Research community is precisely the same reason why LINUX is popular now.... At $100/site license for a University, it might as well have been free -- and people could stomp on any buggy code, or even create their own improvements. As companies like SUN started coming out with 'proprietary' versions of UNIX, and limiting the access to their source-code (based on the work of thousands of grad students), it is only "A COINCIDENCE" that the Free Software movement (e.g. GNU) started to gain prominence at the same time (yea, right!).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The answer was simple:
Although it wasn't a GNU license, justabout anybody who had UNIX had the source code, and you could share the code with anybody who had a license (i.e. just about everybody with UNIX) -- all you had to do is prove you had an appropriate license.
The reason why UNIX gained popularity in the Research community is precisely the same reason why LINUX is popular now.... At $100/site license for a University, it might as well have been free -- and people could stomp on any buggy code, or even create their own improvements.
As companies like SUN started coming out with 'proprietary' versions of UNIX, and limiting the access to their source-code (based on the work of thousands of grad students), it is only "A coincidence" that the Free Software movement (e.g. GNU) started to gain prominence at the same time (yea, right!).
LINUX is really just a continuation of the origins of UNIX popularity (with a 1-decade diversion thrown in)
my personal web page (put up for a completely different reason) expresses this idea in a completely different way.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
His ideas and his attitude.. Well, one is positive, the other is less so. For making GNU, yay! Of course, it's other hackers working together that has made the REAL GNU, but he did lay the foundation, so hats off to him. The rest though, he's just a little too arrogant.
When I first downloaded and installed Linux (kernel version 0.99), I did it because it was free as in beer. I since have used solaris (sparc and x86), bsd, irix, aix, hpux, and dec unix. I like every one of them (properly conigured with other GNU tools) better than Linux. But I use and encourage other to use Linux, because it is free as in free source code.
The question I *think* that's being asked is not whether Linux would not have developed as it has today without being Open Source, but whether it would be popular if it were exactly the same code, but a closed and proprietary product. If it were just a product on the shelf from a company that had written it, who would be buying?
Only a fraction as many, that's for darn sure. Don't get me wrong -- it has great merit as a product, but we all know that doesn't count for everything; maybe not even for much. Superior products that wither in niches and even die are a common story in this business.
And besides, haven't there been any number of *nix products for sale for a long time? SCO, Xenix, etc? None ever appeared on the radar. For that matter, Solaris for 386 has been available about as long as Linux has been on the mainstream-media map, and Solaris' penetration rate is tiny by comparison, despite a large existing user base on Sun's popular (for Unix) hardware.
So, nope, not even if it were the exact product we have today, sold very cheaply by a company that ran its venture capitalists near-broke by being as responsive as possible to customer feature requests, it would still be a fraction the user base.
The emotional prejudice that its users feel for it as a community, shared project -even those that don't code- should not be underestimated.
What I meant basically was that, yes, Linux would have remained an unknown-by-most operating system... wasnt really comparing Minixs (??) purpose with Linuxs... (could some english specialist correct me on those "s"? :)
would be viewed as another splinter in Unix, rather than a new OS in its own right.
It wouldn't have so much support, and it wouldn't get as much media attention. It would, however, strengthen Microsoft.
Free Linux is a Good Thing.
insignificant sig
Even heroes can be jerks, and sometimes, after realizing they've become bona fide heroes, they become jerks.
Umm, pay attention to what sources are being asked for. RMS says all software should be Free. Not everyone agrees. But many agree that certain things should ALWAYS be Open Sourced.
Games? Not usually.
Drivers? ALWAYS! Critical operating system components? ALWAYS! Programming languages? ALWAYS! Application platforms? (i.e. browsers) ALWAYS!
There's a difference.
Please don't think with your emotions.
No rights are taken away; instead, more possibilities are constructed. If somebody redistribute in a form with more restrictions, then people get the option of using the free version, or using the version with more restrictions (and most likely more features, as why would they otherwise put up with more restrictions?)
The result of your restrictions (the GPL) is
There are your results. Do they seem worthwhile?
Personally, I feel better knowing I do as much as possible for bringing the world forward than I do from feeding my own paranoia. I don't like the thought of a world were the cost of development either go from the spare time of the developers or the pocket of the first user. Where everybody is forced to fit into the same mold, and don't even get to vote with their dollars (unless said dollars are enough to buy the entire country).
But then again, I don't use the GPL, so I don't have to worry about being the one to inflict this situation on people.
I'd call that ingratitude. And what's wrong with putting in writing that you expect a little bit of gratitude?
You are assuming a model of the world were programmers do as much programming whether they earn money from it or not. This is simply not true. You are also assuming that this is an all-or-nothing proposition. This is also not true. When I did commercial products based on a proprietary version of FreeBSD, we gave ~90% of our changes back. The last 10% was part of what paid for having those 90% developed, and were not of general interest (e.g, disabling conflicting hardware protection because we had more specific control over our hardware than FreeBSD generally does, and tuning a number of system constants to boost performance very specifically for our application while cutting performance for interactive use).
Note that there were legitimate business reasons for us to give away those of our changes we did give away:
We probably would have given them away on purely based on that being the right thing to do, but as it were, we found other good reasons, too.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
You've got it the wrong way round. Would Linux be this big without the free software movement backing it up?
The answer is a resounding no. Linux is ONLY a kernel. Everything else, the shells, the daemons, the applications, came from places like FSF, UCB, WU and elsewhere. These were all around long before Linux -- and without gcc and bash, the Linux kernel wouldn't exist.