Re: what's the killer app for GNU/Linux systems?

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

On Fri, Dec 01, 2006 at 11:25:14AM -0700, Nate Duehr wrote:
> Matthew Krauss wrote:
> >Nate Duehr wrote:
> >>Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:
> >>>Hi,
> >>>A killer app is an application that compels one to use a certain
> >>>system. On Debian lists, someone mentioned that meld, a GUI diff
> >>>utility, was killer. I can't think of any I have because I moved to
> >>>GNU/Linux for its said overall magnificence, instead of a particular
> >>>application, and today there's isn't one utility I admire so much I'd
> >>>consider such... maybe gnome-terminal, lsof, grep, top,
> >>>epiphany-browser, or less. I'd mention admirance for Blender, GCC,
> >>>Python but they are cross-platform. I'd mention GNOME, but it's a 100
> >>>apps. So I give up and ask you, what's your killer app(s)?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>The kernel.
> >>
> >>Without it, I wouldn't be here.
> >>
> >>:-)
> >>
> >>Nate
> >Okay, I can top that: The GPL.
> >
> >:-) twice.
> >
> >-Matthew
> 
> Nah, if there had been no GPL, Linus would have probably licensed under 
> the BSD license.  (Just a guess there, since that's a fake world that 
> never existed, but...)
> 
> My assertion: The kernel is more important than the license.  Code 
> trumps license.  No code, no need to even use or have a license... 
> whatever it is.
> 
> Nate

Code without licence tends not to propagate.  Linux wasn't the first 
Unix-compatible one to have been written.  It seems to me there was a 
Unix-compatible kerlen written in the language TURING sometime in the 
late 70's or early 80's.  But it didn't have a free license, and  -- 
well, have any of you ever heard of it?

-- hendrik