From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem cole) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2020 16:13:38 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Standing on the shoulders of giants, free or not In-Reply-To: <20200219151916.GA12990@mcvoy.com> References: <20200218225824.GB152025@mit.edu> <20200219015446.GC30841@mcvoy.com> <20200219151916.GA12990@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <7CD8352D-A571-4DC5-8934-786E5402BC14@ccc.com> I’m traveling so I can not really reply. But I too think Warren is correct and it probably does come from where you started / your core experiences will taint your view. Clem Sent from my Handheld - expect things to be almost but not quite. > On Feb 19, 2020, at 10:19 AM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > Warner is spot on. I was a little late to the party so I didn't even > realize there was a club at the time, I just knew that it was hard to > get to the source. Looking back, I can see there was a club and I was > not in it, I was a little late, I sort of clawed my way in a bit but > I was definitely not part of the club. I'm annoyed by that because > not being part of it held me back a bit. > > So yeah, very different memories depending on where you were. Warner > nailed it. > >> On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 11:11:29PM -0700, Warner Losh wrote: >>> On Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 7:28 PM Clem Cole wrote: >>> >>> I'm not 100% sure why I'm arguing other than I feel this is so wrong and >>> so disingenuous to those that came before. >>> >> >> I think the difference is whether you were in the club or not. If you were >> inside and read in, there was a vibe that was very much like open source is >> today. If you read the old Australian Unix User Group newsletters, you have >> window into this time... but with a weird "papers please" to prove you were >> in the club. People passed things around in many of the same ways. It was >> cool and different than before. And people recall this fondly. Network >> Unix, for example, dominated the ARPANET from 75 to 78... and it was pure >> sharing... with a catch. >> >> Now, if you weren't in the club, or recall a time when you were excluded, >> you'd have a very different remembrance. The model was better than what >> came before, but not yet to where it needed to be. >> >> The Unix Wars, imho, shot that all to shit. It set the stage for the >> revolutions that happened. >> >> I disagree the GPL was all that. It didn't force people to really do the >> right thing... I have had dozens of boards that run Linux but no source. >> The manufacturer doesn't care or has gone out of business. People only >> comply because they think it is in their best interest. But they do it for >> BSD too... and just because it is free doesn't make it good.. linux has a >> dozen Wifi stacks... >> >> It's no wonder people have divergent interpretations of how we got here. >> What myth do you but into? That will determine if you look at things one >> way or another... >> >> Warner >> >> But, you have to decide that having access to all your sources for your >>> system is your measure of 'success.' My value of success is no more VMS, >>> Kronos, or VM/CMS or the like. I will accept Larry's position that he had >>> many roadblocks that were often silly. But I really don't think my world >>> was as 'charmed' as he claims and his was quite as bad as his might think >>> you look at it. >>> >>> That said, we have deviated from what it means to be "open." What I'm >>> hearing from Ted and Larry that they think open can only mean stallman's >>> definition. I have said, that is not, was not the original definition, nor >>> is it the only case and that the UNIX technology itself was really not as >>> tied up as he claims. I think Larry did have access to sources (maybe not >>> at his University), but like so many of us, once he got to a place that had >>> them (like SGI or Sun). My point is that besides being to read about it in >>> books and papers, getting access to the source from AT&T or UCB was really >>> the norm and stating otherwise is disingenuous and trying to rewrite >>> history a bit. >>> >>> A point Ted has made and I accept is by the time of the UNIX Wars, the old >>> proprietary folks were trying to keep their own versions of UNIX 'secret' >>> and to use Larry terms those roadblocks to >>there<< code was real. But >>> the truth is that the AT&T codebase (while getting more and more expensive >>> as the HW dropped in cost), was always available, and people both >>> commercial and research had it. >>> >>> The problem was that as hardware cost dropped, more and more people wanted >>> the sources too and that were the I think the difference in the success >>> metrics come. >>> >>> Certainly, for us that lived in a 'pre-UNIX' world, UNIX was a huge >>> success. It did what we wanted -- it displaced the proprietary systems. >>> And in the end, the UNIX ideas and UNIX technologies live today - because >>> they were open and available to everyone. It does not matter if it was >>> GPL'ed or otherwise. >>> >>> In the end, what matters to me is the ideas, the real intellectual >>> property NOT the source that implements it. This has been proven within >>> the UNIX community too many times. It has been re-engineered so many times >>> over. Just like Fortran lives today, although it's different from what I >>> learned in the 1960s. It's still Fortran. Unix is different from what I >>> saw in the early 1970s, but its still Unix. >>> >>> And that is because the *ideas that makeup what we call UNIX ARE open* >>> and the people looked at the sources, looked at the papers, talked to each >>> other and the community built on it. >>> >>> It looks like a duck. It quacks like a duck and even tastes like duck >>> (mostly) when you inside. It's a duck. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> COFF mailing list >>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org >>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff >>> > > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm