People think that Zuckerberg gives them the ability to become
popular, to contact the rich and famous, to see what their
'friends' are doing.. What Facebook actually does is to take
away the privacy and the private data of the users.
And Zuckerberg is only the actor who represents the
company. Facebook has over 500 developers who
are working on the code. Sometimes a thing is attributed
to a single person although it has been done by a whole
group (a kind of attribution error ?).
Wernher von Braun for instance is sometimes called
"the greatest rocket scientist". Although he made some
suggestions for the design of the Saturn V rocket, the
rocket itself and its modules were built by at least
four big companies: The Lunar Module was built by
Grumman, the Command Module by North American
Aviation, the Saturn V rocket itself was produced by
Boeing (1st stage), North American Aviation
(2nd stage, 3rd stage), and IBM was the main
contractor for the computers.
Facebook has not even an own data center, which means
they use contractors to store all the personal data. And maybe
they would not need a data center at all. You mentioned Shawn
Fanning: Zuckerberg has apparently not understood the power
of P2P. I think the fundamental architecture of Facebook
is wrong, it should be more like Shawn Fanning's
Napster, Bram Cohen's BitTorrent. Like a P2P system.
-J.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marcus G. Daniels" <[email protected]>
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2010 8:01 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Can Developers be (Rock)stars?
Jochen Fromm wrote:
> And Maya Angelou said "People will not remember what you did, they
will not remember what you said, they will remember how you made them
feel."
Probably people do not think dreamy thoughts of Mark Zuckerberg every time
they use Facebook.. but then he's a billionaire too.
Or maybe the names Bram Cohen or Shawn Fanning don't mean a lot to your
average Joe, but nonetheless peer-to-peer networking forced the
entertainment industry to make fundamental changes. Perhaps the name
Linus Torvalds means nothing to most people, but rest assured Linux is a
term that is not foreign to senior management at Microsoft.. similarly
Phil Zimmermann and the U.S. government.
For what it is worth, I do remember reading this announcement as a
teenager.. at 1200 baud, paying by the minute for the telephone call.
Back before it was a fait accompli and taken for granted...
From
CSvax:pur-ee:inuxc!ixn5c!ihnp4!houxm!mhuxi!eagle!mit-vax!mit-eddie!...@mit-oz
From: rms%mit...@mit-eddie
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.usoft
Subject: new Unix implementation
Date: Tue, 27-Sep-83 12:35:59 EST
Organization: MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA
Free Unix!
Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete
Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and
give it away free(1) <http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html#f1>
to everyone who can use it.
Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly
needed.
To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to
write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker,
assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text
formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of
other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that
normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including
on-line and hardcopy documentation.
GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical
to Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based
on our experience with other operating systems. In particular,
we plan to have longer filenames, file version numbers, a crashproof
file system, filename completion perhaps, terminal-independent
display support, and eventually a Lisp-based window system through
which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen.
Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages.
We will have network software based on MIT's chaosnet protocol,
far superior to UUCP. We may also have something compatible
with UUCP.
Who Am I?
I am Richard Stallman, inventor of the original much-imitated EMACS
editor, now at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. I have worked
extensively on compilers, editors, debuggers, command interpreters, the
Incompatible Timesharing System and the Lisp Machine operating system.
I pioneered terminal-independent display support in ITS. In addition I
have implemented one crashproof file system and two window systems for
Lisp machines.
Why I Must Write GNU
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good
conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license
agreement.
So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles,
I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that
I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.
How You Can Contribute
I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money.
I'm asking individuals for donations of programs and work.
One computer manufacturer has already offered to provide a machine. But
we could use more. One consequence you can expect if you donate
machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date. The machine had
better be able to operate in a residential area, and not require
sophisticated cooling or power.
Individual programmers can contribute by writing a compatible duplicate
of some Unix utility and giving it to me. For most projects, such
part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the
independently-written parts would not work together. But for the
particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. Most
interface specifications are fixed by Unix compatibility. If each
contribution works with the rest of Unix, it will probably work
with the rest of GNU.
If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or
part time. The salary won't be high, but I'm looking for people for
whom knowing they are helping humanity is as important as money. I view
this as a way of enabling dedicated people to devote their full energies
to
working on GNU by sparing them the need to make a living in another way.
For more information, contact me.
Arpanet mail:
[email protected]
Usenet:
...!mit-eddie!...@oz
...!mit-vax!...@oz
US Snail:
Richard Stallman
166 Prospect St
Cambridge, MA 02139
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