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Unix looked very much to be on the ropes at the time. It was extremely fragmented and warring with itself. There was no Linux to unify the Unix-like operating
by andrewstuart 4y ago
Unix looked very much to be on the ropes at the time. It was extremely fragmented and warring with itself. There was no Linux to unify the Unix-like operating systems. Unix was fraught with lawsuits and licensing claims and issues.
I worked in the heart of the corporate world and at this time the sentiment has changed from "you can't get fired buying IBM" to "you can't get fired buying Microsoft".
As @gaff said in this thread said - it has nothing to do with Microsoft ad spend or what the magazines said - it was dead obvious. And were it not for Linux then it would have been a Microsoft world. Remember also it was Microsoft that saved Apple from bankruptcy when jobs returned. I do think that if not Linux then FreePSD would likely have become todays "Linux".
- ghaff 4y agoI did a podcast series on "Was open source inevitable?" a couple years back which ended up more focused on infrastructure and Linux than it probably should have been. [0] But the general conclusion of my guests was that it probably was. (And, yes, some variant of BSD in spite of the legal hangover. Bryan Cantrill argues this specifically.) I do think that absent an open source movement beyond the fringe, Microsoft might have ended up more dominant commercially. [0] https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/06/podcast-was-open-source-inevitable-part.html https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/06/podcast-was-open-sourc...