Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 00:07:03 -0800
From: Brian D Chase <bdc@world.std.com>
To: pups@minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au
Subject: Re: Viral Unix Compiler
In-Reply-To: <200001060935.UAA48295@minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au>
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On Thu, 6 Jan 2000 norman@nose.cita.utoronto.ca wrote:

[...]

> Dennis's Turing Award lecture in the same issue of CACM is worth
> re-reading too, especially for those who think that Open Source is a
> cure for the common cold or that it was invented in the 1990s or
> 1980s.

Well, I think the whole basis for Richard Stallman's formation of the FSF
and the GNU project during the 1980's was to keep alive the inherently
"Open Source" nature of the software created during preceding decades.

I hope not many people actually believe that Open Source is new concept.
My personal take on Stallman is that he's a little whacked, but I do
respect him incredibly for the work he's done with through the FSF.  I
think the industry could very easily have gone the Shareware route of the
PC world had the GNU project, and eventually Linux, not entered the scene.

It's possible we'd still have been okay with Linux once FreeBSD and
NetBSD became a reality, but I believe Linux's early appearance struck
just at exactly the right moment -- just when the web was being born.

There's an immense amount of work ahead, but at least we're maintaining
our history... and hopefully some people are learning from it.

-brian.
--- Brian Chase | bdc@world.std.com | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ -----
It is good that the world has Internet, for the world can see living math
done from the pouring of the concrete foundation all the way up to where
the beautiful pictures are hung on the wall and the microwave is warming
up cheese burritos.  -- Archimedes Plutonium, 1995