History and Software
..YMMV
(no, not that kind)
Human communication? NO. DATA.
(there are a LOT of ways to express this)
The marginal cost of software (and anything else "digital") is zero,
and economics (for better or worse) tells us that its real price will approach zero.
If software is infinitely reproduceable and can be shared everywhere for free;
then no piece of software should *ever* be rewritten;
and everyone should always have the best one.
If software is infinitely reproduceable and can be shared everywhere for free;
then no piece of software should *ever* be rewritten;
and everyone should always have the best one.
A lot of people are sharing and that is awesome...but also
to figure out how things are going,
consider software more as a free resource, not so much a product
A good predictor of how long something will be around in the future..
... is how long it has been around in the past
Individual pieces of software are sometimes intelligently designed...
...but the ecosystem is DEFINITELY evolution.
(i.e., a lot makes no sense
Our knees TOTALLY bend the wrong way.
Y'all.
We put a man on the moon before we put wheels on luggage.
ARE YOU SERIOUS.
What do we use it for?
Documents? (Nope, we use the worst program ever, instead)
or
A weird base of literally all of web programming.
yeah, if that existed on the internet that'd be nice
JOKING SORT OF (I take this seriously a bit later..)
You find two things:
Free and Open Source software (esp Linux)
AND
Text
(these two things are STRONGLY related)
1) More open generally wins in the long run
2) Piracy? Meh
Apple? IBM? MS?
Nah, Xerox.
“You’re ripping us off!” Steve Jobs shouted. “I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!” Gates just sat there coolly, looking Steve in the eye….
“Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
Apple II/Macintosh series
Apple v. IBM (COMPATIBLE)
MS Windows v. OS/2
The Steve at Apple who REALLY mattered?
https://jrm4.com/slides/LIS-3353_-_Software.html
(1977-1984ish)
Apple dominates.
Keeps EXCLUSIVE right to make
“Apple” Machines
Apple was winning, IBM was in confusion
(Classy, Steve)
But through a series of fights, other companies got the *right*
to license IBM's Operating System to Other Manufacturers
Also: Steve Jobs is FIRED from Apple by John Sculley (1985) :
“Overpriced Mac is a toy, and dropping prices won't help”
And decides to make a new O/S
(Also, makes the unfortunate mistake of keeping this guy around to write it, since his people wrote the old one. It was
”MS-DOS” after all.)
So they do both OS/2 and this other side project you may have heard of...
"Letter to Hobbyists"
Convinces developers
(and the world)
“SOFTWARE IS A PRODUCT”
(please appreciate how weird this is)
Convinces developers
(and the world)
“SOFTWARE IS A PRODUCT”
(please appreciate how weird this is)
Is Math? is Science? Also?..
How you gonna sell an OS
WITHOUT A COMPUTER? And Vice-Versa?
Standalone* office appliances running proprietary software.
*infrequently connected or networked.
“Sneakernet!”
Probably not Windows the OS, but ...
Probably not Windows the OS, but ...
Direct competition?
Government Intervention?
(I didn't make this up, they used it INTERNALLY)
Either BUY OUT your competition, or E,E,E.
(e.g.)
.Net
ActiveX
DirectX vs. OpenGL
Attempted with odt.
This prevents you from having to competitively innovate.
(and is kind of understandable.)
“ "One thing we have got to change in our strategy—allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destory [sic] Windows."
Because of discovery, and the other thing
United States v. Microsoft, 253 F.3d 34 (2001)(mostly over IE.)
Europe did, but without much consequence...except that you can legally now say "Convicted Monopolist, Microsoft"
The argument:
Monopoly Leveraging – not that MS had an impermissible monopoly, but that it would use that monopoly to take over the internet, with that AMAZING browser….
Internet Explorer.
(ps, EU courts Europe basically won this same case, the crazy result being that when you installed Windows, over there you could pick a browser.
(instead of using IE to install Firefox like we did here)
"Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority." - Bill Gates
Home Computer as Household Appliance(running proprietary/closed source software)...
but what about those other big computers and networks and stuff...old school?
SLOWLY.
With The Internet
+
With Non Computer Devices
Both of which run on:
Free Software
mostly just to understand the goofy names, a way to do the robot
In computers, it's actually okay to define something with itself.
Richard Stallman, 1983ish
“complete Unix-compatible software system”
The GNU Manifesto → Golden Rule → GPL
But..no kernel...
Weird picky guy who says outrageous things about technology
Weird picky guy who says outrageous things about technology
THAT END UP BEING TRUE*
*definitely not an endorsement of his non-tech ideas
Weird picky guy who says outrageous things about technology
THAT END UP BEING TRUE
DON'T call it Linux. Call it GNU/Linux!!!
and
They're going to go into your home
and burn your books!!
..I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu..
“Sadly, a kernel by itself gets you nowhere”
- Linus Torvalds
GNU shells, compilers, userspace system tools, libraries. are added.
Also, most importantly:
GNU GPL is adopted for Linux
but good enough for now..
Free Software / FOSS / FLOSS
Here's some code, do what you want, but please share back what you do.
Open Source
Here's some code, do whatever you want. (including lock it back down)
LITERALLY LINUX:
Super close ("Posix Compatible etc)
EVERYTHING THAT ISNT WINDOWS*
Are MOST often running something that
- literally is Linux OR
- is at least Linux like
(you see this in things like URLS, email addresses, etc)
A bit more complicated than one might think...
Free software existed first.
"Free as in speech, not free as in beer."
Libre v. Gratis
So, "Open-Source" is adopted.
All free software is open source, but not all open source software is free (as in speech or otherwise)
And so, you get a pretty good mix....
You can do most anything with it, including lock it back down and making it unfree.
(BSD, Apache, anything MIT Licensed)
You can do most anything with it yourself..
EXCEPT you may NOT re-release it closed.
GNU/Linux, Firefox etc.
The OS wars are over, and Linux and "Open-source" won.
Historically?
Free and Open Source, overwhelmingly
Today?
Free and Open source, overwhelmingly,
but with weird business models...
Like I said, LINUX and TEXT.
But there's A LOT OF MONEY in between, aka PLATFORMS
Much more on this later
There is no cloud, it's just someone elses computer.
Almost *always* running Linux.
Web hosting, etc.
(e.g. the LAMP stack)
Relatedly:
TEXT.