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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.
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
You're right, users don't care about the source code - but developers do, and to make an OS you need developers, not users.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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