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I'm pretty sure we've always had free software, from the moment people started writing software. Surely most of us started out downloading free software from B

I'm pretty sure we've always had free software, from the moment people started writing software. Surely most of us started out downloading free software from BBSes? Remember fractint? Sorry, but if Stallman hadn't done anything, we'd still have Linux, and all the other software we enjoy today.

joelthelion 15y ago
>Sorry, but if Stallman hadn't done anything, we'd still have Linux, and all the other software we enjoy today. Are you absolutely certain about that? Think about it: if for example Linus had released his kernel with a more permissive license, he might not have received as many contributions, and maybe Linux would never have become as great as it is now.
- maximusprime 15y ago
  Personally, I'm certain it would have happened anyway. Even going further, if Linus hadn't done Linux, someone else would have hacked together a free open source Unix OS and got a following behind it. History is littered with cases where a large number of people 'discover' or 'invent' something, and then one of them happens to be credited with it, and goes down in history as "the inventor". But it was bound to happen anyway.
  - joelthelion 15y ago
    >History is littered with cases where a large number of people 'discover' or 'invent' something, and then one of them happens to be credited with it, and goes down in history as "the inventor". But it was bound to happen anyway. You could say the same of Einstein, or ... even Steve Jobs :)
    - maximusprime 15y ago
      I think it's a little different though. There's millions of programmers with all the skills needed to write gcc or linux etc. The only thing needed is time. But to be an Einstein or Jobs requires a bit more skill and there's far fewer people in the right circumstances to be an Einstein or Jobs.
      - vacri 15y ago
        Selective bias again. Jobs seems to have this effect on people. Torvalds is more than just a coder, and his mix of what's important and his personal philosophy is every bit as special as Jobs'.
redthrowaway 15y ago
We wouldn't have had Linux without GNU (or something like it).
- maximusprime 15y ago
  Why not? Wouldn't Linus have just hacked together the tools he needed like gcc etc? Not having software isn't a show stopper. It just means you have a bit more work to do. So yeah maybe building gcc might have taken a few months, but it wouldn't have prevented anything, only delayed the inevitable.
  - sparsevector 15y ago
    It's impossible to know whether or not Linux would exist without GNU, but GCC isn't something you can hack together in a few months. Clang is the closest thing to a GCC replacement we have, and it didn't compile Linux until October 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clang)
    - maximusprime 15y ago
      Since GCC exists, the motivation to build another gcc is far less. If gcc had not have existed, people would have built what was needed. This isn't rocket science, it's just programming. We don't invent things, we just build what needs building.
      - kragen 15y ago
        You might naïvely think that, but it turns out that things that need building often don't get built, or at least not for many years after they first needed building. I mean, you could have written jQuery in 1999. We still have problems with hardware that isn't supported by free software.
        maximusprime 15y ago
        You're comparing a compiler (necessary to build stuff), with a javascript library which makes things a bit easier for newbies? If people needed a compiler, they would have built one. Jquery was an optional addition that some like using. It hasn't enabled things that weren't possible before.
kragen 15y ago
Fractint is a perfect case study. It has died, not because people stopped computing fractals, but because it was under a no-commercial-distribution license, not a free-software license. That meant that commercial Linux distributors like Red Hat couldn't include it in their product, and so it gradually lost the contributors who could have kept it relevant. Linux was originally under a similar license. It could have died in the same way, leaving only the BSD projects, which have been much less effective at attracting contributors. You could argue that maybe without competition from Linux, they would have been able to attract more contributors; but I think the truth is the opposite — with fewer free-software users, there would be fewer free-software contributors, and less free software, increasingly marginalizing free-software systems. And, without inspiration from Stallman's ideology, even BSD would never have become free, according to Keith Bostic. So we'd have some free software, but we wouldn't have a coherent movement that strives to ensure that everyone can use a 100%-free-software system.
- maximusprime 15y ago
  I disagree. It died once everyone had generated a billion fractals and it was no longer particularly cool.
  - kragen 15y ago
    They started being repetitive because the software stopped gaining new abilities, because people stopped working on it.

joelthelion 15y ago

>Sorry, but if Stallman hadn't done anything, we'd still have Linux, and all the other software we enjoy today. Are you absolutely certain about that? Think about it: if for example Linus had released his kernel with a more permissive license, he might not have received as many contributions, and maybe Linux would never have become as great as it is now.

maximusprime 15y ago
Personally, I'm certain it would have happened anyway. Even going further, if Linus hadn't done Linux, someone else would have hacked together a free open source Unix OS and got a following behind it. History is littered with cases where a large number of people 'discover' or 'invent' something, and then one of them happens to be credited with it, and goes down in history as "the inventor". But it was bound to happen anyway.
- joelthelion 15y ago
  >History is littered with cases where a large number of people 'discover' or 'invent' something, and then one of them happens to be credited with it, and goes down in history as "the inventor". But it was bound to happen anyway. You could say the same of Einstein, or ... even Steve Jobs :)
  - maximusprime 15y ago
    I think it's a little different though. There's millions of programmers with all the skills needed to write gcc or linux etc. The only thing needed is time. But to be an Einstein or Jobs requires a bit more skill and there's far fewer people in the right circumstances to be an Einstein or Jobs.
    - vacri 15y ago
      Selective bias again. Jobs seems to have this effect on people. Torvalds is more than just a coder, and his mix of what's important and his personal philosophy is every bit as special as Jobs'.

redthrowaway 15y ago

We wouldn't have had Linux without GNU (or something like it).

maximusprime 15y ago
Why not? Wouldn't Linus have just hacked together the tools he needed like gcc etc? Not having software isn't a show stopper. It just means you have a bit more work to do. So yeah maybe building gcc might have taken a few months, but it wouldn't have prevented anything, only delayed the inevitable.
- sparsevector 15y ago
  It's impossible to know whether or not Linux would exist without GNU, but GCC isn't something you can hack together in a few months. Clang is the closest thing to a GCC replacement we have, and it didn't compile Linux until October 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clang)
  - maximusprime 15y ago
    Since GCC exists, the motivation to build another gcc is far less. If gcc had not have existed, people would have built what was needed. This isn't rocket science, it's just programming. We don't invent things, we just build what needs building.
    - kragen 15y ago
      You might naïvely think that, but it turns out that things that need building often don't get built, or at least not for many years after they first needed building. I mean, you could have written jQuery in 1999. We still have problems with hardware that isn't supported by free software.
      - maximusprime 15y ago
        You're comparing a compiler (necessary to build stuff), with a javascript library which makes things a bit easier for newbies? If people needed a compiler, they would have built one. Jquery was an optional addition that some like using. It hasn't enabled things that weren't possible before.

kragen 15y ago

Fractint is a perfect case study. It has died, not because people stopped computing fractals, but because it was under a no-commercial-distribution license, not a free-software license. That meant that commercial Linux distributors like Red Hat couldn't include it in their product, and so it gradually lost the contributors who could have kept it relevant. Linux was originally under a similar license. It could have died in the same way, leaving only the BSD projects, which have been much less effective at attracting contributors. You could argue that maybe without competition from Linux, they would have been able to attract more contributors; but I think the truth is the opposite — with fewer free-software users, there would be fewer free-software contributors, and less free software, increasingly marginalizing free-software systems. And, without inspiration from Stallman's ideology, even BSD would never have become free, according to Keith Bostic. So we'd have some free software, but we wouldn't have a coherent movement that strives to ensure that everyone can use a 100%-free-software system.

maximusprime 15y ago
I disagree. It died once everyone had generated a billion fractals and it was no longer particularly cool.
- kragen 15y ago
  They started being repetitive because the software stopped gaining new abilities, because people stopped working on it.