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"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." You're right that open source had been a thing for quite some time in 1998. GNU was start
by Darkstryder 7y ago
"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."
You're right that open source had been a thing for quite some time in 1998. GNU was started in 1983 after all.
But I respectfully disagree that open source was "obvious" in 1998. Hell, at that time, one could argue it was not obvious for a lot of people how much the Internet and computers would alter our lives. Open source was the least obvious part of quite a few a mind-bending paradigm shifts.
- Retric 7y agoOpen source was very obvious in 1998 for competent tech companies. As in look at successful companies in 2005 and most of them where using OS software in 1998. One of PG’s essays has a line like, ‘any competitor using Oracle was easy to ignore.’ Successful OS software needs to be good enough not to need marketing and happens to be free. It might not be the best, but cheap and good enough generally has a lot going for it.
- Darkstryder 7y agoI fully agree. But I was talking about a (presumably not very tech-enthusiast) lawyer from 1998, not a software developer from that time.