Here is something I found in the forum bulletin (for the benefit of those of you who don't read it).
The philosophy of free software | News | TechRadar
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Here is something I found in the forum bulletin (for the benefit of those of you who don't read it).
The philosophy of free software | News | TechRadar
I think most people don't like anarchy and fighting, even the hawks, and this is why societies exist in the first place: because people do spontaneously organize to create order from chaos. Most people want to be useful and valued by their peers, as that's where we get our identity from, so we try to do things that help society at large, or at least whatever group we identify with.
I know some people are not this way, but I do believe they are in the minority.
Some people like to play games, others like to play sports. I like to build things and solve puzzles, and open source is a way for me to do it and correspond with clever people from all across the world. When I use other OSes, I never get to build things or fix problems. I'm sitting there doing whatever the designers decided to let me do, and it makes me feel frustrated and useless. Probably a lot like a soccer player who is only allowed to watch games but not play.
Back in the days of the mainframes, the companies would give you the source to the OS and any assemblers compiler, linkers, etc and customers could customize it. The money maker was the hardware, not the software. I was in computers back when the GNU project started and they were seeing the Unix and other non-mainframe locking the code. When I bought my Atari 800, I had the OS source as well. If you look at software advancements, when the code was shared, lots of advancements were made. Also competing programs were more in number back then. But the courts ruled that you could not prevent a patient if it contained software and the companies (with large deep pockets) have pushed that into software patients.Quote:
Originally Posted by hazel
Unix for many years was free from AT&T as well (until the AT&T break-up when they attempted to make money from it).
Thanks for that Hazel, it's a good read.