Is the command line the only way to free software?

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

Digital not only used X on its Ultrix and later Unix systems, it also
used X on VMS. Much of the contributory work was done by people at
Digital. I worked at Cadmus computer in the mid-80s, when we developed
our own windowing system based on the Apple Mac, which the company
actually sold to Apple.

One of the real beauties of X is that it is not tightly bound to the OS.
Unix and Linux work perfectly fine without a GUI.

On 03/17/2010 02:09 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>  =20
>> And, if I recall, the X Window system itself predates Microsoft Window=
s,
>> although it was not free back in the 1980s.
>>    =20
> Just to be pedantic (and spending some time on Wikipedia)...
>
> Actually, Windows 1.0 was released in 1985 which is after the first X
> windows release in 1984; but before the first X11 release
> in 1987.   Of course, nobody paid much attention to Windows until 3.0
> in 1990.  The Apple Lisa was first available in 1983 with
> the MacOS coming out in 1984.   So basically everybody had a windowing
> system by the mid-80s, the difference is that nobody used Microsoft's
> version for another 5 years.
>
> Also, the X Window system was always free.   Unfortunately, it was
> released under the MIT license (similar to the BSD license) which did
> not require recipients to make changes to the source code available to
> others.  The result was every workstation vendor made their own
> private changes and you rarely had access to the source code for what
> was actually shipped to you.   If you had low end graphics from Sun
> (apparently the hardware of choice at MIT), you could compile a
> completely functional X Window system yourself.  High end graphics or
> non-Sun and you usually had to use the vendor's X server.   Or if you
> wanted to use Sun's SunView libraries/applications because they
> weren't actually written to the X protocol and you had to use Sun's X
> server which supported both.
>
> Bill Bogstad
>
>  =20


--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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