On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 3:38 PM, paul <[email protected]> wrote: .. > i think the prime movers of these companies have big influence on this: > Sun, Google, and Yahoo (Im not sure if yahoo has a good soul) > founders are from stanford university so they carry with them their > academic culture...
Hmmm.. so companies founded by college dropouts have no soul? :-D (both Larry and Bill didn't finish college.. although Bill has an honorary degree from Harvard now) > i disagree > to the idea that FSF has no significant contribution... its philosophy > is pervasive and i think many scientists/engineers/students have > benefited on this... .. > i think this is the power of FSF. individuals > can contribute... because of linux, no need to work in private > companies to have > access to UNIX. because of open source like mysql, octave, etc... > individuals can > be productive without spending so much money to contribute knowledge. The notion of peer review and open publication was around for decades before the FSF appeared. Even in the 1800s, scientists like Niels Bohr and Ernest Rutherford kept up an active correspondence and shared research with each other. I guess it would be more accurate to say that It's also notable that the GNU Project, having completed the UNIX userland, were nowhere close to having their own kernel until Linux came along. Even their ever-delayed Hurd kernel is today not as usable or mature as Linux. And while Linux is not the work of one man, it is not directly imputable to the FSF but to a wider "network effect" in general. Another important point is that a lot of innovation on UNIX came out of Bell Labs -- but Bell Labs "shared" their innovations not out of altruism, but because the anti-trust settlement between AT&T and the US government forbade AT&T from selling any computers or software, so Bell Labs "gave away" the source code. AT&T was an even larger monopoly than Microsoft today (or Google) but it was this entrenched monopoly which funded the R&D which eventually led to where we are today. -- Orlando Andico +63.2.976.8659 | +63.920.903.0335 _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
