Dexter Graphic wrote:
> I very much enjoyed the Revolution OS documentary we watched last night.
>
> I had never seen or heard Richard Stallman speak before (even thought I
> have read much of his website and various other writings) and it was a
> real joy to see the man behind the ideas in living color (so to speak.)
>
> I also enjoyed seeing and hearing Bruce Perens, another individual who's
> writings ("The Debian Social Contract" and "The Open Source Definition")
> greatly impress me.
>
> I had already seen and heard Linus Torvalds speak (I've even met him in
> person.)
What, ESR and Larry Augustin didn't do anything for you? (-:
> Something that struck me while watching the film was how all these
> big shots [...] could not figure out how to make progress in their
> field (computer and software technology) because of the limiting
> factor of ideas in their heads,
That is absolutely false. Silly Valley is constantly churning with
new ideas. In the last three years, I've had friends at startups
working on:
Web-based photo developing (ofoto and shutterfly)
A 360 degree panoramic video camera (bethere)
A digital VCR (TiVo)
About a dozen storage-area-network companies
An mp3 sharing directory (Yes, I had friends at Napster, and
Anne even interviewed there right
when the lawsuits were starting.)
A router that can be sublet by interface or by bandwidth
A satellite based web content delivery system (geocast)
A disk driver that automatically backs up the disk
3D audio spatialization software (me at SGI)
That's just the most interesting ones I can think of offhand, and all
of them were for-profit enterprises. My point is that there is no
shortage of innovation, and that greed doesn't necesarily inhibit it.
Linux is more famous than any of the projects I mentioned (except
Napster), partly because open source development directly involves
more people, and partly because it's a romantic story of idealistic
hackers sticking it to the man, but mostly because it just happened to
be in the right place at the right time.
--
Bob Miller K<bob>
kbobsoft software consulting
http://kbobsoft.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
