Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Open Source: The Wave of the Future
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Question: Do you see the trend continuing, or is it only short term?
> |
> | Dalle: We think that this is a long-lasting trend that has been enabled
> | by the Internet as a platform, which has facilitated collaboration and
> | sharing of code.
In some ways, it's a bit ironic that it was OSS that made the Internet
possible, in the form we know it today, not the other way around. Even
Microsoft used the BSD TCP/IP stack, the NCSA Browser, and the SendMail
mail handler as their baseline code. They made numerous enhancements,
as did many of the UNIX vendors, but the "core" technology was actually
based on OSS technology.
This OSS technology became the "reference model" for the protocols,
against which proprietary implementations were measured. Internet
Explorer ultimately ended up successful, not because of it's
proprietary extensions, which are often partially or completely
disabled by most corporations and many individualas, but because of
it's ability to comply with the standards established by OSS
technology.
The UNIX community was sharing and collaborating, using much of the
technology we know today, as far back as 1980, with the release of the
BSD kernel. The UUCP network which gave us most of the e-mail
technology we use today, along with newsgroups, existed even before the
merger of the UUCP net, BitNet, and ARPAnet which became known as
"internet" (small I). Even though it was noncommercial, and commercial
traffic such as advertizing and "spam" was banned, companies had
already learned that providing excellent technical support on this
network was a really good way to sell more computers, software, and
services.
Ironically, the Internet (big I to indicate commercial Internet), was
partly a result of projects like FreeBSD and Linux and Hurd. In the
early 1990s, the release of X11R4 made it possible for UNIX users to
have a standard graphical user interface. SCO and Interactive UNIX was
a possibility, but these companies were bound by a "Floor" price in
their contract with AT&T, which was designed to protect the
minicomputer market from PC based Servers.
Stallman had been trying to get the HURD kernel into a workable form,
looking for developers with the technical expertise, who weren't
"infected" by having seen the AT&T or BSD source code.
Linus posted his kernel in 1991, and he posted it under a GPL License.
He wasn't actually intending for it to become it's own kernel, he was
inviting the HURD project to take a look at it. Instead, he got a
bunch of enhancements and upgrades in the form of source code patches,
all provided by the original authors, who were willing to share their
code under the terms of the GPL. From the beginning, Linus kept
records of the contributors, just in case anybody contributed
copyrighted code. In addition, the GPL and source code review made it
possible to identify any copyright or patent violations. If there was
even a question of originality, Linus often had other candidates which
could be used to replace the challenged code.
When AT&T lost the BSD case, they let BSD publish their own kernel,
which was moved from Berkely to University of Colorado. There it was
picked up and redistributed as BSD386, and later FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and
NetBSD. Novell bought the rights to UNIX, and then licensed a bunch of
software under the BSD and GPL licenses. They also turned the control
of the brand name over to X/Open. The remaining rights were eventually
transferred to SCO.
Linux resulted in a machine that ran something that worked like UNIX,
but could be assembled for less than $1,000 at a time when most PCs
running Windows 3.1 cost over $3,000, and the SCO or Interactive UNIX
software alone, including TCP/IP, documentation, and X11, could run
another $3,000.
By the end of 1992, SLS was offering most of the same features and
capabilities as what we now know as Solaris, including OpenLook
toolkits and Window manager, along with some OpenLook applications.
They also offered some enhanced Athena applications, and Full support
for the newly released X11R5 or X11R6 (can't remember which), all for
less than $200 for an "ammo box" of Floppy disks, or you could download
it for free over a low speed modem (9600 baud?).
And as much as Wintrolls like to pretend that Bill Gates didn't know
about Linux, it was very clear that Bill Gates was very aware of the
impact Linux was having on the Industry. Linux, UnixWare, and Solaris
were all fully capable of doing things that Windows 3.1 couldn't even
approach. Windows NT was not going very well, and was falling way
below expectations, both in the lab, and in the marketplace. Bill was
very concerned about Linux, especially plug-and-play Linux and it's
descendents, including Red Hat, and the impact they could have on the
industry. By the time Windows 95 was released, Microsoft had included
a TCP/IP stack (using a BSD code base), and offered a web browser in
the PLUS! package (using NCSA code base), and had implemented their own
plug-n-play, which relied on proprietary codes only known in their
entirety by Microsoft.
Gates was terrified that Novell's UnixWare, IBM's OS/2, Sun's
Solaris/x86, or Linux, could win commitements from the OEMs or VARs and
lead to a massive erosion of the Windows marketplace. Ironically, the
biggest competitor to Windows 95 and Windows 95B, was Windows 3.1.
Windows 9x had broken backward compatibility with so many third party
applications, that users were often refusing to upgrade.
Worse, since windows 95 required new hardware, many Windows 3.1
machines, were getting turned into Linux machines, because Linux could
run on the old 3.1 hardware, but could access and even SERVE Internet
standards.
> | That really has been the driving factor of the open
> | source movement. It was out there for awhile, but the Internet as a
> | collaboration platform has really allowed this business model to
> | explode.
And conversely, the OSS technology has allowed the Internet to explode
into a huge collaboration platform. It took OSS 30 years to become an
"overnight success".
It's nice to see that corporate executives are finally beginning to
recognize that OSS technology and open standards ultimately lead to
higher profits. This is why Google is such a threat to Microsoft.
Here is a system that is based on Linux, OSS, and even Usenet Archives
as content, that has now made a huge amount of profit, and only went
public (selling a very small percentage) to allow retiring key
contributors to convert some of their ownership into cash or loans.
> | Obviously, software is an evolution. ... It will continue
> | to make leaps and bounds, but going forward, to a large extent, if
> | it's addressing big enough markets, open source will be the
> | development and distribution approach.
> `----
The irony is that the Internet is just reproving what has been known
since those early UUCP nodes back in the 1980s. There are too many
people willing to distribute trojans, malware, and malicious code, and
the only insurance against this is to be able to trace the source code
back to it's origin. This is something Linux has tried hard to
support.
Bill Gates predicted, back in 1997, that Linux and OSS would ultimately
overtake Windows, and figured that NT 5.0 (2000) would probably be the
last time Microsoft could really invest a substantial amount of money
and expect to recover that investment. Even Windows XP made the bulk
of the profit in the form of Support contracts, and add-ons that
allowed them to maintain and even increase their prices or Windows OEM
licenses.
> http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=21635
>
> Unisys: open source software set to have a similar impact as the Internet
|
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