3 ms·

The previous accident of that kind was UNIX. That's acute, considering an open-source is mainstream today - a couple of accidents is enough to change the world.

• pjmlp 8y ago
  Yes, had Bell Labs not been forbidden to sell it, thus going to the market with a closed source OS, selling it the same price range as VMS, OS/360 and similar systems, the history outcome would have been quite different. Still anyone that has had the pleasure to write portable UNIX code knows that portability is relative.
  • snaky 8y ago
    Maybe UNIX and PC wouldn't be enough actually, without at least four points (half-accidents at least) of that history - RMS, BSD, Sun and Linus. That's quite a fragile chain of events.
    • pjmlp 8y ago
      Agreed.