On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Juan Alberto Cirez <[email protected]>wrote:
> Let me be the devil's advocate and say that while I welcome Microsoft > acknowledgment that OSS is worthy of concern for their bottom line; I will > also recognize Microsoft role in making what OSS (and GNU/Linux > specifically) is today. Had it not been for Microsoft (and IBM) we may not > have had the PCs and Open Source Software. Before I say anything else, I started my degree in the 1980's and have been watching the tech world since DEC had the Dec-20 as their main system. When I started being interested in personal computers the SWTP-80, the NorthStar and the Altair 8080 were what to get. I actually programmed a Honeywell DPS-6000 (one of the first systems that hosted the PCC, the portable C Compiler). I watched as UNIX made its mark on history. The first UNIX I had my hands on was System III on a AT&T 3B5. Juan, just as in the last thread that you started, you have just made a sweeping assertion that you have not backed with any argument to support that assertion. I'm not saying that you are wrong, just that the statement is unsupported. Again, I don't want to start a flame war, but I see it differently. Way back before the the internet was commercialized there was USENET that was mostly a loosely connected web of computers that used modems and the phone system to spread information. One thing programmers did with USENET was to share code that was usually packaged into uuencoded tar files. This was back in the 1980's. Above I mentioned the Portable C Compiler. That tarball was available from USENET from the inception of UNIX. That was the original C compiler that UNIX was compiled with on a new machine. This even before the GPL and Richard Stallman. Most of the packages were available for anyone to modify the code or use it as they pleased. It was understood that you were to share any modifications back to the community. It is in this spirit that Torvalds sent his historic message out in 1991, saying here's his little project, it probably won't amount to much. If you like it and fix any bugs then he wants to be the clearing house for modifications etc. Immediately Linux grew wildly. I was in the University of Lethbridge at the time and the first time I booted Linux was in a University lab on a PC in 1992! At the time in that lab I saw all my classmates just overjoyed at what they were looking at (at a University that small the number of CS grads numbered around 15, everybody knew everybody in CS!). I heard at least 3 say they were going to try it out at home and see what they could do with it. In the intervening years I have seen project after project attempt to fill in for what is missing to make Linux a viable day to day platform for general computing. What I see happening is that people see what is missing and see what they can do to fill the missing parts. That happened to word processors. That happened to Desktop Environments, also with browsesrs and with many other application areas. Linux had another advantage. The person managing it stated that the way to get modifications accepted was through meritocracy. It is largely through his deft management of contributions that we are have this thread about Linux rather than one of the BSD's. Licencing it under the GPL also had a part in that. That is how Linux grew and that is what I have seen. It would have happened regardless of which other systems were popular simply because people want a free (as in speech) OS that they can rely on. It is really the fulfillment of Richard Stallman's visions that came out of the community of generous coders that were on USENET years ago! BTW! That is how you support a statement.
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