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Linux would have never been as successful if someone like rms would have called the shots. People still tinker with the GNU Hurd microkernel and it's less usabl
by myztic 11y ago
Linux would have never been as successful if someone like rms would have called the shots. People still tinker with the GNU Hurd microkernel and it's less usable than Minix. Linus is also no god for me, but he is delightfully pragmatic, someone companies can work with, not against.
- bcg1 11y agoLet me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul
- theGimp 11y ago1. Attribute that quote. 2. This has nothing to do with Linus, and from what I can tell, parent did not deserve it either. Linus hasn't made a fortune off Linux. He could have, but he didn't.
- bcg1 11y ago1. http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/masters-war http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/masters-war 2. To clarify, I wasn't referring to Linus
- mjcohen 11y agoHowever, if there is no forgiveness and no soul, money is a useful (but not the only) metric.
- BCM43 11y ago"Linux would have never been as successful if someone like rms would have called the shots." I'm not sure how you can think that when GNU, which is the operating system for just about every single server running Linux, was started by RMS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU
- myztic 11y agoA lot of userland-stuff is GNU, Linux is the kernel. Kernel + Userland is OS! So saying "GNU ... is the operating system for just about every single server running Linux" does not make sense.
- Zigurd 11y agoI've seen some of RMS's early work in relation to LMI, TI, and open source in the early days, before Linux. RMS has never been anti-business. Just anti the idea that closed-source software licensing is a sustainable business model. Very few people in any part of any flavor of FOSS are actively anti-business.
- slgeorge 11y agoThe problem with that statement is that the vast majority of the software business world interprets anti-proprietary software as being anti-business. And, not entirely without reason given that it's extremely difficult (almost impossible) to build a large software business without licensing. If you're RMS then you point to things like contracting for changes, but much of the software industry would be unsustainable on that footing. For a bad analogy - it's like watching two people speaking variants of English - they're using roughly the right words but both come away confused.
- Zigurd 11y agoYou say "but much of the software industry would be unsustainable on that footing." That's what you call a tautology: It's very difficult to charge a unit license for open source software. Sure, but is taht relevant anymore? Android is the most widely used OS on the planet, and it became so faster than anyone expected. What advantage do closed-source vendors actually derive from a fetish for secrecy? Do their customers believe they've got some secret advantage? Does anyone believe Windows has some secret sauce in it that makes it better than other OSs? Much of the software industry today sustains itself on indirect revenue. Even Microsoft admits it must pivot to ecosystem revenue and away from unit licensing revenue.
- e12e 11y agoThis explains the failure of gcc, glibc and gnu utils/userland to completely fail to gain traction too! /sarcasm (Although the egcc split was painful, and at long last there are some viable alternatives - it took decades for them to rise up. So it's a little odd that the FSF/RMS would never have successfully been able to develop a project? Obviously the need for a (new) GPL licensed [kernel] is less when there exists a decent GPL licensed kernel (Linux)).
- chris_wot 11y agogcc is already beginning to lose traction to llvm.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- e12e 11y agoMy point was that "already", means "it took a long time". See also: embedded development.
- wiz21c 11y agocould you elaborate ?
- FullyFunctional 11y agoI've heard this unsubstantiated claim for years now. It certainly depends on your metric. LLVM still lacks behind in generated code quality on most mainstream platforms [my own unpublished benchmarks]. LLVM appears to attract more mind-share from people leveraging the infrastructure, including writing new front- and back-ends; I'm guessing the code is easier to understand and better documented. A few years ago I had expected LLVM to have caught up to GCC by now, but I hadn't anticipated the accelerated pace of GCC improvements. I don't know if the competition from LLVM had anything to do with this, but GCC is showing no signs of slowing down.
- pjmlp 11y agogcc was largely ignored until UNIX vendors started to sell the development tools instead of bundling them with the OS. The majority of FOSS users are actually people that don't want to pay for software and never give anything back to the community.
- bgilroy26 11y agoI agree but the opposite is also true. For many developers who may or may not know very much about the FSF and RMS, Linux represents the "free as in libre" operating system. They compare it to Apple and Microsoft and see it favorably. Without the GPL and GNU, Linux would not have the same brand. The GPL is part of Linux's public image and a public image is what drives usage.
- riffraff 11y agoTo ne fair, if many hackers hadnt embraced linux in the 90s, they might have worked on hurd, there is only a finite amount of hackerness.