Re: what's the killer app for GNU/Linux systems?
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On 12/01/06 15:50, Nate Duehr wrote:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 12/01/06 12:30, Nate Duehr wrote:
>>> Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 02:30:54PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
>>>>> The *real* killer "app" was Linus' decision to develop Linux openly.
>>>>>
>>>> I took a software engineering class where the professor maintained that
>>>> the only notable contribution that Linus Torvalds has made to the
>>>> programming/compsci/compeng world was figuring out how to make it
>>>> possible for hundreds of people to work on the same code base without
>>>> stepping all over each other.
>>> He was wrong. People step all over each other in the kernel and just
>>> about every application that requires more than a few developers all the
>>> time in the open-source world. [Hint, see recent ABI screw-ups in
>>> mysql-server and mysql-client... not caused by Debian, happened
>>> upstream. Retarded bugs really, too.]
>>
>> Just because Linus solved a *social* problem, doesn't mean that that
>> ability was instantly transmitted to every other project.
>
> What social problem did he "solve"?
"Solve" is the wrong word. Mea Culpa.
> You appear to have him on a
> pedestal he probably doesn't deserve nor want.
>
> Back then source was generally free for a whole lot of OS's. He just
> wrote a interesting new monolithic kernel
That barely did anything.
> for x86 hardware and invited
> the world to help him work on it.
And has *kept* them working on it, without turning it into a huge
ball of legacy crud, without forking or general worker revolution.
However he does it, he *has* done it, and that is his genius.
> He's no genius of social sciences or
> anything.
He's a genius at something.
> The rest was just dumb luck and timing. The time was right for
> something new, maybe. BSD was going strong by the time Linux popped up.
If herding cats was soooooo simple:
1. FreeBSD would be the dominant OSS OS,
2. NetBSD and OpenBSD would not have forked with much acrimony,
3. NetBSD would not now be dying,
4. nor OpenBSD starving for cash.
> You give him too much credit. Where he might be a genius is in keeping
> it together all these years... not in doing Linux in the first place.
You need to re-read the thread, specifically the part where I wrote:
Message-ID: <456F3F7E.7070807@cox.net>
FreeBSD and OpenBSD would do most tasks just as well.
> The first Linux kernels weren't exactly earth-shatteringly great or
> anything. There were lots of OS's that did a better job on x86
> hardware, and a few were already open-source.
>
> Just as an example, Microware's OS/9 is still around, and it was up and
> working on multiple hardware platforms years before the early Linux
> kernels came out. It never was open-source, but it's still a better
> RTOS than Linux.
QNX has been around for 20 years, and runs on many processors.
CP/M ran (runs?) on the Z80, 8086 & 68000.
NT ran (for a time) on x86, Alpha and MIPS.
z/OS has been around for 35 years, running on a sequence of
processor units over the years.
DOS/VSE has been around for *41* years.
OpenVMS runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanic.
HP-UX started on 68000, went to PA-RISC & now Itanic.
The AS/400 started out as 2 radically different 70's-era
minicomputers, and now runs on Power64.
I won't even mention how many systems that NetBSD runs on.
Shall I go on?
- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA
Is "common sense" really valid?
For example, it is "common sense" to white-power racists that
whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins
are mud people.
However, that "common sense" is obviously wrong.
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