As I was reading my way through Slashdot today, I came across the
following article, listed as, "...if you read one article referenced from
Slashdot this month, this should be the one." It's the transcript of an
interview with Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software
Foundation.
Part One is here:
http://www.immaterial.net/page.php3?id=44
The following reference is from Part Two. It's long, but interesting.
"The Cisco world consists of selling at exorbitantly high prices routers
which use proprietary software. So, in order to know how to program a
router you have to know Cisco-talk. They spend vast amounts of money in
junior colleges on vocational educational systems to teach people
Cisco-talk, and those kids graduate with Cisco certification, they go to
work in the businesses that need network infrastructure, and they install
Cisco hardware. There's a bilateral monopoly between technically,
vocationally trained people, who have learned a proprietary way of doing
things, and a manufacturer which sells goods at very high markups, because
it has a proprietary, secret language.
Now, the router is in fact not a complicated entity. Many years ago we
created, spontaneously, a thing called Linux-router.org, which is simply a
way of providing a Linux kernel optimized for routing in a very flexible
little package that fits on a 1.44 floppy disk, and routers are in fact
throwaway boxes - a strong router is a 100 Mghz 486."
Good to know that we've got the kudos of the FSF. Good job, Dave, and
everyone else out there who's done anything to make LRP a little bit
better.
--
George Metz
Commercial Routing Engineer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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