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Cyhist Dec 6, 1998 K
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========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 18:07:04 -0500
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "David S. Bennahum" <davidsol@panix.com>
Subject: Free Software, Shareware, etc.
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Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
For those list members interested in Richard Stallman, and the Free Software Foundation, I did an interview with him in 1996 and a transcript of that conversation is available for you at http://www.memex.org/meme2-04.html
Getting at the history of how software evolved in an open collaborative environment is very important right now, because I think we are seeing a growing interest and acceptance of this kind of development among consumers who've never experienced that ethic (because they never hung out in computer rooms as students). We may find the next few years will be a time when open source programs thrive, and penetrate into areas like the Windows 98 monopoly. That aside, one CM member wondered about why this sort of ethic did not seem to thrive as much in the micro BBS culture, CompuServe, etc, while it thrived in the Unix/Usenet world. One possible answer: Unix/Usenet ran in a time-shared universe, while the Micros were stand-alone. Time-sharing seems to induce communal values, since users are sharing the same processor and storage, while Micros do not (they are more about having one's "own" software, this is "my copy" of MS-Word, etc). An irony of our time is that the sea of PCs out there, now connected to the Net, are returning them to the status of quasi-terminals, in a vast time-shared network called the Net. No wonder then, that as more everyday people use the net, they become more open to things like Linux, or at least the mindset behind Linux.
/d
CM Moderator
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "David S. Bennahum" <davidsol@panix.com>
Subject: Free Software, Shareware, etc.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
For those list members interested in Richard Stallman, and the Free Software Foundation, I did an interview with him in 1996 and a transcript of that conversation is available for you at http://www.memex.org/meme2-04.html
Getting at the history of how software evolved in an open collaborative environment is very important right now, because I think we are seeing a growing interest and acceptance of this kind of development among consumers who've never experienced that ethic (because they never hung out in computer rooms as students). We may find the next few years will be a time when open source programs thrive, and penetrate into areas like the Windows 98 monopoly. That aside, one CM member wondered about why this sort of ethic did not seem to thrive as much in the micro BBS culture, CompuServe, etc, while it thrived in the Unix/Usenet world. One possible answer: Unix/Usenet ran in a time-shared universe, while the Micros were stand-alone. Time-sharing seems to induce communal values, since users are sharing the same processor and storage, while Micros do not (they are more about having one's "own" software, this is "my copy" of MS-Word, etc). An irony of our time is that the sea of PCs out there, now connected to the Net, are returning them to the status of quasi-terminals, in a vast time-shared network called the Net. No wonder then, that as more everyday people use the net, they become more open to things like Linux, or at least the mindset behind Linux.
/d
CM Moderator
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