I have been involved in the freely-distributable software community since
1975. (Yes, Virginia, it predates the Free Software Foundation, and, in
fact, can be traced back to the '50s.) Freely-distributable software has
some advantages, but I didn't see then and I don't see now any path by
which it will replace commercial software development. Anyone who thinks
that IBM, HP, et al adopting Linux is evidence to the contrary doesn't
understand the lesson of the Open Software Foundation.
It is fun to participate in this list, and, if I could find the synergy, I
would be willing to direct my current company (which is using Linux) to
develop some enhancements to Linux (that we might need as part of our
product development) and to contribute those enhancements to the community.
(That's why I subscribed, to find out what we could expect from Linux and
what we could contribute.) I even have some long range projects that I might
be willing to pay "Linux kernel experts" to do for me and then contribute to
the community. What I'm trying to say is that I'd like to see Linux and
Free BSD and the FSF and so on all to succeed at what they are trying to do,
but I haven't seen anything change in 25 years that make me think that y'all
are having any fundamental impact on the economics of software development.
While I think that Merkey has a skewed view and an axe to grind, I think
that the level of optimism on the other side borders on the naïve.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tigran Aivazian [mailto:tigran@aivazian.fsnet.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 1:57 PM
To: Jeff V. Merkey
Cc: Linus Torvalds; Daniel Phillips; Mike Galbraith;
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Availability of kdb
On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Then it may be that corporate America weeds out Linux over
more likely is that corporate America weeds out commercial software as a
model which was superseded by the free software. We (the creative anarchy
community led by Linus) are here to help that happen, gradually and slowly
without shocks and fits by those who love this world and the things that
are therein so much they choose to serve Mammon and make money on that
which should be inherently free (to wit, any form of information, isn't
it just 1s and 0s? :)
Regards,
Tigran
PS. If Linus objects to being a leader of such community, I may remind
that the keyword there is "anarchy" and that assumes that, to some extent,
the consent of a human to be or not to be its leader, may be freely
ignored by those being lead, without even disturbing the symbiotic harmony
between the leader and those he leads.
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