4 ms·

Imagine universe in which open source does not exist. Would the internet be less centralized? What's the mechanism?

by mlinksva 8y ago

eikenberry 8y ago
More likely the internet would just not exist or would be entirely centralized in services like AOL.
- mlinksva 8y ago
  I agree, even wrote a quaint blog post on that long ago https://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2006/08/07/aolternative-history/ https://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2006/08/07/aolternative-histor... ... but partiallypro seemed to be claiming the close to the opposite, that open source caused centralization. I'd still love to read a justification for that claim!
rolph 8y ago
there is no internet there is only the bitcoinstream. The early internet was "opensource like" as in not monetized. it was a very different time in the 80s and early 90s. Grassroots BBs and FTPs were the fodder. websites were made to convey information, many of them made for the love of it. i think no FOSS would have allowed the current state of the internet to occur much more rapidly. many more people would have experienced the net/web as a service, extended to you on the terms of the service provider.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  All of the internet was built on FOSS. If you want to understand what the world would have been like without FOSS, you need to look not at the internet, but at the competing technologies that were duking it out at the time. Novell Netware for the bare backbone and Compuserve/AOL for services. Keep in mind that these services charged per hour for usage. Even when we talk about grass roots systems like BBSes (the vast majority of which were FOSS, BTW), the task to connect them up together was ridiculously expensive. I remember paying $4.50 per hour plus 1 cent per bit transferred to interconnect my BBS. It's one of the reasons I switched to Usenet and UUCP email as soon as I knew what it was. Back then there were gatekeepers who made sure you paid to play. The internet broke that because it allowed anybody to connect for free as long as you found a way to do it. The gatekeepers used proprietary protocols and software to lock you into their paywall. The internet used FOSS to make it easy for you to connect. That was literally the difference.

Imagine universe in which open source does not exist. Would the internet be less centralized? What's the mechanism?

eikenberry 8y ago

More likely the internet would just not exist or would be entirely centralized in services like AOL.

mlinksva 8y ago
I agree, even wrote a quaint blog post on that long ago https://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2006/08/07/aolternative-history/ https://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2006/08/07/aolternative-histor... ... but partiallypro seemed to be claiming the close to the opposite, that open source caused centralization. I'd still love to read a justification for that claim!

rolph 8y ago

there is no internet there is only the bitcoinstream. The early internet was "opensource like" as in not monetized. it was a very different time in the 80s and early 90s. Grassroots BBs and FTPs were the fodder. websites were made to convey information, many of them made for the love of it. i think no FOSS would have allowed the current state of the internet to occur much more rapidly. many more people would have experienced the net/web as a service, extended to you on the terms of the service provider.

mikekchar 8y ago
All of the internet was built on FOSS. If you want to understand what the world would have been like without FOSS, you need to look not at the internet, but at the competing technologies that were duking it out at the time. Novell Netware for the bare backbone and Compuserve/AOL for services. Keep in mind that these services charged per hour for usage. Even when we talk about grass roots systems like BBSes (the vast majority of which were FOSS, BTW), the task to connect them up together was ridiculously expensive. I remember paying $4.50 per hour plus 1 cent per bit transferred to interconnect my BBS. It's one of the reasons I switched to Usenet and UUCP email as soon as I knew what it was. Back then there were gatekeepers who made sure you paid to play. The internet broke that because it allowed anybody to connect for free as long as you found a way to do it. The gatekeepers used proprietary protocols and software to lock you into their paywall. The internet used FOSS to make it easy for you to connect. That was literally the difference.