vsbabu.org

Unix's revenge

Read Unix’s revenge.

• “. If the US is justified in raising non tariff barriers against outsourcing services to India, would India be justified in saying, 'No more government purchases of Microsoft products'? Are the two comparable?”
• “In a way, it could be said that both Sun and Microsoft are suffering from an invisible and amorphous enemy: the Free Software Movement ...”
• “ In the 1988 to 1990 period or so, there was an opportunity for UNIX to become the desktop operating system of choice. At that time, Microsoft did not even have a good windowing interface: you used a command line interface. Companies like AT&T, Sun, HP, Data General, Toshiba, DEC and IBM got into a pig headed little OS war about precisely whose specific version of UNIX should be pushed forward. I was a participant in all this, and in hindsight, we took our eyes off the prize: the desktop. Microsoft, waiting in the wings, was happy to walk off with the spoils as the other guys fought their internecine battles.”

1. "I hope I understand correctly: the 'free software' people work under the GPL or 'copyleft' which means that the code is free but any change you make has to be, in turn, shared with the entire community, thus ensuring that all benefit, which is indeed revolutionary and egalitarian. The 'open source' people simply make source code available."

   It seems that Stallman indeed has a point about sticking to the term "Free Software", observing that the term/brand "Open Source" doesn't quite get the message across. Open source is about much more than making the source code available, but that might not be obvious to the unacquainted.

   Posted by: Paul Boddie on May 4, 2004 08:59 PM

2. "The 'free software' people work under the GPL or 'copyleft' which means that the code is free but any change you make has to be, in turn, shared with the entire community."

   You can make a change without being obliged to share it; only if you distribute the modified code does the GPL require you to share the source.

   Posted by: Hamish Lawson on May 4, 2004 10:01 PM

3. I do not think you should be publishing articles by people with dubious credentials such as Rajeev Srinivasan: check out his columns(!) in rediff.com where he comest out as a rascist and a bigot.
   regards,
   - Bhushan.

   Posted by: Bhushan Y Nigale on May 31, 2004 07:04 PM

4. Open source is indeed about much more than making the source code available!!

   
   Regards,
   Jenthony
   http://www.jenthony.com

   Posted by: Jenthony on July 4, 2004 08:01 AM