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It is strange how words lose their meaning once the concept becomes common-place. We don't say motor-vehicle anymore, electric lamp, and so on. People would pr

• 4ad 13y ago
  Microsoft's products were never an example of open architecture; the meaning of open architecture didn't change much in the last decades.
  • pmelendez 13y ago
    It actually did change. In early eighties it basically meant support from different vendors and the ability to extend the hardware by adding new components. So for instance, the first IBM PC and Apple II were considered open, because you could extend it by adding peripherals. On the opposite side, the Apple IIc was closed because it wasn't upgradable from outside of Apple. In the case of MS, they were really opened in terms of hardware that would accept since was the fabricant who would provide the drivers. Lately, pretty much all PCs are open under that definition just devices like iPad or some smartphones would be considered closed.
    • 4ad 13y ago
      Sorry, but by only considering early PCs you are ignoring most of the IT industry in that era. The PDP-11 came with full schematics, that was normal in the day, that was what "open" meant in the day to engineers. The early proprietary Unix systems, although they were proprietary and you couldn't share the code, they usually came with the source code. It was considered normal in that day to modify the kernel and recompile it. The PC business guys reused the term as part of their strategy, but for engineers it always meant something else.
• brianmcc 13y ago
  >> Sometimes I think computer science history need to be at-least an elective subject for software engineering/computer science courses. This is a really great idea, never thought about it before. Possibly even a decent book idea. Something that covers the hardware/software landscapes over the past 30 - 40 years, say.