The halloween document...

[jc at minya.ne.mediaone.net (John Chambers)]

| Richard Royston wrote:
| > I believe that PC's were the first computers for which open source (or 
| > whatever you choose to call it) was not generally and widely available from 
| > the beginning. Microsoft and its hangers-on have used the extension of 
| > computer use to non-traditional computer users to gradually force out much of
| 
| I don't know if this is really true.  I can't name a single colleague that
| paid for PC software during the 80's.  Pirating software was like a hobby
| (mush like collecting trading cards).  Had software for PC's been better
| protected, I doubt PC's would've become as popular that quickly.

That's not quite the same thing.  Lots of DOS software  was  pirated,
but  most  of  it was copies of the binaries.  I don't seem to recall
ever seeing much source to DOS software.  (And most DOS  users  would
not have known what to do with the source, anyway.  ;-)

The significance of the "open software" isn't that you  can  get  the
programs free; it's that you can get the *source* free.

Of course, this has pretty much always been true of the leading  Unix
distributions. One of my first encounters with Unix was being the one
responsible for Amdahl's UTS system on a bit mainframe (brought in by
the engineering staff over a lot of dead IBMers bodies). It came with
full source.  This wasn't an option; we got it.  The support guys  at
Amdahl  were happiest if there were people at a site who could handle
C.  I recall sending them several bug fixes, which made it into their
next release.  This wasn't considered remarkable at the time.  It was
just how a sensible company would treat a customer.

More recently, one of the things that really helped  Sun's  sales  in
their  early years was the news that if you wanted to see the code to
anything in the system, their engineering staff would email it to you
(or  tell  you  where to ftp it from).  This wasn't advertised (to my
knowledge), but it was common practice, and  not  a  secret.   I  saw
several  cases  where a team working on Suns would bring a product to
market much faster than other teams, simply because when they  had  a
problem with anything inside the system, Sun would send the source.

In recent years, Sun has stopped doing this.  now  they're  facing  a
serious  challenge  from  linux, and have been making tentative moves
back to the open-system approach.  No surprise here.

Whether Microsoft will ever see it this way  isn't  clear.   And,  of
course,  they  just  might  have the financial clout to overpower the
Justice Dept and solidify their hold on the industry.  (If Bill Gates
can own all the comm lines, the battle will be over.  ;-)

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