I find it helpful when I am helped by a fellow programmer with a coding question. I also find it helpful when I'm out searching for a way of coding something and find it.

But at the sametime I question whether all this "Free Code" out on the internet is a benefit or a ball an chain to the "IT" industry.

I know of and meet to many non "IT" individuals that think that they can program the "internet" because of all this free code and the same applies to buisness managers that consistantly hire the wrong people for the job.

What do you think?

"did you just say Minkey?, yes that's what I said."

MrGreed

As you stated there are pluses and minuses.

On one hand, you are greatly helped in your problem. Others are also helped if they have a similar problem they can quickly decipher it and get a good response.

On the other, you are giving a newbe the ability to do that same thing. Most likely, they won't understand it though. Then they say, "I can do this," but they don't understand why or how it works.

I guess javascript is a good example for this (of which I am guilty). I know very little javascript, but I find something similar to what I need, I copy and modify, I'm done. But that also means most of the time I am finding other ways to achive the same thing.

Mike Wills
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer
http://www.koldark.net

I don't think that giving free code is ruining the industry. If a manager hires the wrong person because he cannot distinguish a professional from a witch doctor, he gets what he deserves, and he puts his job on stake.
He will have to explain to upper management, board etc why the bussiness is not running. Before the blow reaches at the floor a lot of layers close to the top have absorbed the first impact.

I do not say that everything you must give away for free, but sharing, publishing knowledge is a good way of self promoting. The best way to learn something is to teach in it.

Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

I agree that its a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, I agree with swanels in that sharing and publishing knowledge is a good thing.  And he's right in that teaching something is the best way to learn it.

On the other hand, it does allow for slugs to pass themselves off, at least for a time, as being qualified to do that which they can't.  During that time, they too represent the industry, and give it a bad name.  Its very eash for the board, after they've fired both the manager and the employee from the previous example, to generalize that negativism across all the members of our profession.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

if you are talking about Open Source Software (OSS) some feel both ways about it.

When you really think about it the IT industry should be a two part industry.  The first one that is the hardware industry.  They provide a product.  The other part of the IT industry is a service sector that provides software and consultation.

In this world you cannot give away hardware cause it cost something to produce it.  However the knowledge to create it can be given away as a consultation service.  Consultants get fees for giving information on something.

On the software side of things there are two distinct types of software. Proprietary and free (like OSS) software.

Microsoft makes money selling Windows and any other software they make.  The only free things they give to people are things that forces them to always use their Windows Operating System so they can keep the market tied to them.  Since they have a licencing fee for each version of their software that allows them to racks up the money.

Despite making a lot of money on licensing fees Microsoft also makes money off certification for people hoping to become Microsoft Certified Professional Engineer. They also make a lot of money selling tools to help develop on their platform (Visual Interdev).

Linux does make a bit of money but not nearly as much as MS.  They sell the CDs on which they have the copies of their software.  They also sell support and documentation.  This is how they make money.

Both have their place in the IT industry.  I know that many things I code could be better done by someone else but some specific things I can do better than others.  Sometimes someone can comment on my code if I show it to the world and that allows me to make my code better.

There are still plenty of things we can do in the IT industry.  Plenty of software that can be written and I think it will always be that way.  If we write software then we should consider ourselves as people offering a service.  We offer our time against money.  Not something we did.

Gary www.xutopia.com Haran

Sometimes giving away things for free is part of a strategy. Look at the programming languages, there are give away versions (stripped) to atract programmers for using it. Do you think VB would have been making it if Micro$oft had been starting just buy selling it? Would you buy a 3-digit software without having a "testdrive" or without knowing what the product is capable of?

Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

As far as I am concerned the internet is for passing knowledge/information on anything and everything, including code!
Anyway it's not possible to stop people from giving free code, as much right as you may have to sell code, other people have as much right to give away the same code for free.
I don't think it's ruining the industry either, ya still gotta know how to use the code, how to modify it etc

Also, if people can't get code for free they will just try to steal it! :)

   É
:: http://www.endamcg.com
:: http://www.endamcg.com/finland-gaa

>Do you think VB would have been making it if Micro$oft had been starting just buy selling it?

Er...they did. I don't recall any freebie or stripped down versions of VB1 or VB2 (and it was VB2 that won market share for VB)

Well here'a a thought. Without free code, Windows NT and Mac OS X wouldn't exist. A great deal of the Windows NT code is based on Free BSD code, and Mac OS X is basically BSD with a proprietary Windowing system on top.
The Internet itself is based on a Free standard, TCP/IP, and most TCP/IP stacks in most OS's are just recompiled from the BSD source.
The Apache Web server is Freeware and runs most of the internet.
How has any of this Free software done any damage.
I remember when Bill Gates was asked about the Internet in the early 90's. He said that MS would not support it as he didn't see it as anything more than a techie fad.
Netscape came a long with a free browser (not the first) and suddenly MS could see a market it wasn't dominating, so IE was born (interestingly it too is Free).
Lastly, lets look at Linux. It can reasonably be argued that the superior security of Linux (more freeware)is driving a lot of the MS devlopment in promised upgrades for the future. Surely, even those die hard MS lovers have to acknowledge that a more secure Windows would be a good thing.

>A great deal of the Windows NT code is based on Free BSD code

Really?

strongm,

Yes it is.

Gary www.xutopia.com Haran

Did you actually expect M$ to develop a solid, stable OS? That company is not rich and famous for developing advanced solutions that are unique and risky. They are rich because they do a good job at buying/ stealing code and recycling it into a marketable product.

M$ history of coyping others :

DOS : bought for 20000$USD when it was still called dirty operating system

Windows 1.0 : copied Xerox

Windows 95 : blatently copied Macintosh (recycle bin, desktop that all comes from Apple).

Windows NT : copied kernel and many subroutines from Freebsd

Word, Excel, Powepoint : Word copied a Mac program whose name I forget.  Excel is a copy of Lotus 123, Powerpoint copied Harvard Graphics.

Frontpage : failed attempt to copy Dreamweaver.

Visio : bought from another company and then recoded to work with Office.

Windows XP : some of the bugs found in Freebsd are also found in XP.  This leads to think that XP uses lots of C routines found in FreeBSD.

Internet Explorer : some parts are Based on NCSA Mosaic. RSA code copyright of RSA.

ActiveX : nothing more than a Java clone that only works with Windows.

JScript : copy of Netscape's javascript.

MSN Hotmail : bought for a few millions

Say the only thing I recall MS inventing (actually not really inventing but coming up with a commercial version first) is plug and pray.

Gary www.xutopia.com Haran

An article in today's paper about MSs legal battle with the government and 9 states, listed M$ revenue from 6/2002-6/2002: $28.4 billion; Market Value: $287.6 billion (which is higher than the Gross Domestic Product of more than 150 countries, including Switzerland, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina.) They also have 93% of the pc market and 96% of the browser market.

Not bad having 96% of the browser market since they were a late comer to the internet arena and Billy thought it wasn't going to be going anywhere. But with more money than most countries, I guess you can level (destroy) the competition. And hey, you don't have to have good products either or make sure they work because there isn't any competition and if there is you either buy them or destroy them!

I liked that phrase: "plug and pray"

Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

to say the least MS forces the world to give its code away for free.  Because whenever someone makes something useful to the world (RealAudio, RealVideo, Netscape etc) MS just copies and makes it run better on their OS because they know the OS in and out (and hid the real speed optimisation options that Windows offers to other people).  

When Real Networks was making money on RealAudio MS decided to ruin them by offering Windows media and windows media encoder for free in their OS!

When Netscape was making a little money with their browser MS decided to screw them over the same way they did with Real.

This is why we have to give software for free.  Because if we don't MS just copies us and screws us over.

Gary www.xutopia.com Haran

Good God! You've got a real M$ axe to grind, haven't you?

>DOS : bought for 20000$USD when it was still called dirty operating system

Yep, the somewhat tiny MS of the time bought 86-DOS (aka QDOS, or Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products (which was a rip-off of Gary Kildall's CP/M). They modified it to meet the requirements of their then customer, IBM, and released it as MSDOS. IBM also produced a modified version, known as PCDOS. I'll grant that this was because Bill Gates couldn't actually deliver his own OS in time, but how this counts as 'copying', I don't begin to understand

>Windows 1.0 : copied Xerox

I wish!  Amongst other things it lacked icons, and overlapping windows, and initially was limited to CGA resolutions.

That being said, Apple released their 'rip-off' of ideas from the Xerox Alto/Star , the Lisa, in 1983 (Xerox sued Apple in 1989. And when did M$ announce that they were going to do their own GUI for the PC? Yep, 1983. So, who do you think they actually copied (badly)?

>Windows 95 : blatently copied Macintosh (recycle bin, desktop that all comes from Apple).

It is a fair point to say that MS didn't originate the some of the ideas in the W95 desktop. However, much of the Mac GUI was a blatant copy of, or derived from, ideas developed at Xerox. But then so is Ethernet, and we don't go around accusing people like 3COM of copying.

>Windows NT : copied kernel and many subroutines from Freebsd

Impressive. FreeBSD v1.0 wasn't actually available until December 1993, and NT 3.1 was released in August of that year (and had been first demod back in 1991), and the design team got together in 1988 which is a whole 2 to 3 years before BSD was ported to the x86 environment. Given the above I'd question your assertion.

>Word, Excel, Powepoint : Word copied a Mac program whose name I forget.  Excel is a copy of Lotus 123, Powerpoint copied Harvard Graphics.

Microsoft's first spreadsheet was Multiplan, which predates Lotus 123. Microsoft would argue that Excel was a derivative of Multiplan. Furthermore, Word was originally designed to use the same UI as Multiplan. Since this version of Word was originally released several months before the first Mac, it would make if difficult for it to be a copy of a Mac program. I should also point out that Lotus 123 was a blatant rip-off of VisiCalc. As for Powerpoint - well, the first versions were black-and-white only Mac releases. And it wan't developed in-house. Forethought Inc. developed it in about 1985. MS bought it from them after two years of wrangling, and released it as Powerpoint 1.0 in September 1987. The first version of Harvard Graphics was released in 1986, so Forethough sure as heck can't have been copying it in 1985...

>Frontpage : failed attempt to copy Dreamweaver

Or possibly any other number of HTML editing packages.

>Visio : bought from another company and then recoded to work with Office.

So?

>Windows XP : some of the bugs found in Freebsd are also found in XP.  This leads to think that XP uses lots of C routines found in FreeBSD

Is this your sole tenuous basis for arguing that NT is based on FreeBSD? Oh dear.

>Internet Explorer : some parts are Based on NCSA Mosaic. RSA code copyright of RSA

Many early browsers were based on Mosaic, including Netscape's. And ANYONE using RSA has to licence it.

>ActiveX : nothing more than a Java clone that only works with Windows

<sigh>. ActiveX (which really just a marketing rebranding of OLE and COM) is partially derived from IBM technology that MS had access to when working on OS/2, and (as OLE 1.0 and COM) predates Java's 1995 release by at least 4 years.

>JScript : copy of Netscape's javascript

JScript is an implementation of ECMA-262

>MSN Hotmail : bought for a few millions

Rather a lot more than that. But I don't understand the point you are making here.

strongm, for your information, Windblows DOES use some FreeBSD code in their operating system. That is as much a testament to the quality of the BSD operating system and Unix as anything else. Goes to show that Bill cannot create something on his own without plagerizing others code; you would think with over $5 billion a year spent on research and development that MS could create their own code. Linus T. created his own Unix type kernel from scratch as we all know. What Bill geniuses cannot figure it out? A grad student from Finland did!

"There is some contention as to whether Apple were justified in sueing Microsoft, given that they themselves used some of the ideas from the XEROX 'Star' system when desiging their G.U.I. - however the similarities between MacOS and Windows are much more pronouced than those between the XEROX system and the Mac."

SRC : http://www.ox.compsoc.net/~swhite/history/timeline-ORG.html

Today's XP (NT5) has lots of code based on OpenBSD and FreeBSD.  Some of the bugs reported in their software creeped up in Windows today.  Explain that to me.  MS says that Open Source is the worst thing that ever happened yet they fully take advantage of it when they can.

On JScript.

Read history of Javascript here :http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2001/04/06/js_history.html

Netscape created LiveScript later renamed JavaScript.  MS copied and called it JScript *then* the ECMA tried to fuse the two together in what is now ECMAScript.

The point I am making is that MS doesn't truly innovate.  All they do is take from others and make it work as best they can to control everything byte related.  If you look at the history of computers MS is always the last one to enter the playing field but always does it in a way to squash out competition and often times illegaly.

If I have something against MS!  Sure I do.  They make me sick!

Gary www.xutopia.com Haran

What BSD code does NT use then? Is this documented somewhere?

I remember reading a book about the development of NT (Show Stoppers) but can't recall any mention of that, interesting thought.

Mike

"Experience is the comb that Nature gives us, after we are bald."

Is that a haiku?
I never could get the hang
of writing those things.

>however the similarities between MacOS and Windows are much more pronouced than those between the XEROX system and the Mac

If you actually read what I said, instead of continuing to grind your axe, you would see that I agreed that MS copied the Lisa and the Mac, whilst merely pointing out that Apple took a number (but by no means all) of their interface ideas from Altos/Star (I probably went a bit far in using the word 'much').

>Windblows DOES use some FreeBSD code

Never said it didn't. I merely disagree with the original assertion that "A great deal of the Windows NT code is based on Free BSD code"

I'd be interested to hear your views on Apple's use of FreeBSD in OS X...

>Read history of Javascript

I just ran out of energy breaking down your various assertions, and decided to go with an easy option. However...

I'm aware of the history of Javascript, and would point out that the short, sanitised version you reference misses out several important and salient facts - namely that prior to ECMA, Netscape and Sun jointly released Javascript (with Sun getting ownership of the trademark) as an open, cross-platform object scripting language, freely available to the entire Internet community (or at least claimed it would be; took them almost a year before they published the JavaScript reference information, which is one of the main reasons why MS's JScript is not an exact Javascript clone; they didn't have the spec to work from). A large number of companies announced support for it, including DEC, Novell, HP, Oracle, Borland, Symantec, SCO, oh - and Microsoft. Microsoft would have been mad not to port a version, since at that time they needed to maintain a fair degree of compatibility with the Netscape browsers.

The history also misses out the fact that Sun were initially rather unhappy with the idea of Livescript. Only after some 'discussion' with Netscape did Sun endorse the product.

>The point I am making is that MS doesn't truly innovate

Well, I'm not going to argue with you there.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-530081.html

talks about the use of Open Source software at hotmail where MS finally had to admit that they were using OSS two days after they had told the world that they weren't.

Another article I cannot find did mention some bugs TCP/IP buts in one of MS's OS that were exactly the same as one found in BSD.  MS of course denies that it ever copied any OSS cause that would be saying that it is superior to code they can come up with.

Apple does use OSS. It's called Darwin and it's one of the best OS out there.  Apple hired people from the OSS community to develop Darwin which is given back in turn to the community.  

The only thing MS gives back to the BSD group is .NET related stuff and we all know who's to gain from that.

Sorry if i sound all bitter about this.  I just hate going on dell.com and being forced to buy a licence of Windows and Office to get a decent laptop.

Gary www.xutopia.com Haran

Everyone knows that OS X uses BSD code. They have ackowledged it. The problem is that MS uses code and doesn't acknowledge it. Look at a log of DLLs and EXEs and you will see a number of references to the University of California. Hmmm, wonder what was developed at UC-Berkeley?
The WinBlows ftp program seems to be straight from BSD code. I am sure MS would like to buy BSD or Linux if they could so they could eliminate the competition. WinBlows just is not a good product, and you would think with $5 Billion/year in R&D it would be halfway decent.

Read the article from this link about OSs using BSD code.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,555440,00.asp

xutopia

>mention some bugs TCP/IP buts in one of MS's OS that were exactly the same as one found in BSD.

Quite so. Microsoft's TCP/IP stack, in particular Winsock, is based on the BSD stack. As is almost everybodies. They've never hidden this fact - although they don't go around specifically publicising it. The following is a direct quote from "Windows Sockets,An Open Interface for Network Programming under Microsoft Windows" the Microsoft documentation from the first decent release of Winsock, version 1.1, in 1993:

"The Windows Sockets specification defines a network programming interface for Microsoft Windows which is based on the "socket" paradigm popularized in the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) from the University of California at Berkeley."

This doesn't look like Microsoft "denying" anything at all to me.

Note that you've now moved the goalposts twice:

from

1. "a great deal of the Windows NT code is based on Free BSD code"

which is what I disagree with, to

2. "Today's XP (NT5) has lots of code based on OpenBSD and FreeBSD"

which I also disagree with, but at least has the saving grace of no longer suggesting that NT is actually based on FreeBSD, to

3. "TCP/IP bu[g]s in one of MS's OS that were exactly the same as one found in BSD"

Which is much closer to reality, although you still manage to read something more sinister as being afoot than is the actual case.

> I just hate going on dell.com and being forced to buy a licence of Windows and Office to get a decent laptop.

I quite agree. Microsoft's practices in this area leave a lot to be desired.

strongm,

So maybe I can't prove my assertions.  MS doesn't show their source code so we'll never know who is right.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/23348.html

This is how MS says oops after saying that Hotmail ran on Windows and not Unix anymore.  

If you ask me the way they make hotmail run on windows was to incorporate BSD code into their OS.

I guess we'll never know for sure.  But hey MS does use OSS yet they say it is the worst virus ever.  Go figure.  They take and never give back.

Gary www.xutopia.com Haran

Well, I can't completely slate MS products since 2k, xp and a good few of their programs have been very good, stable, user friendly.

There is nothing wrong with buying a product and improving it rather than creating your own, it's a good business move.

That said I am not a great fan of microsoft simply because your average joe has little choice but to use it, and the prices go up and up and up - and we gain nothing more.  

When it comes to paying stupid amounts of money for an operating system that you have little choice but to use, and being flooded with buggy VB programs - or using a free OS that anyone can work on I know what I'd choose.

It's true my beef with Open Source is that it isn't usable.

Gary www.xutopia.com Haran

Boy...

>This is how MS says oops after saying that Hotmail ran on Windows and not Unix anymore

That's not what the article says. It's a grudging admission from MS that they haven't figured out how to implement the necessary infrastructure on their own OS. I've no gripes with that. Doesn't surprise me at all. And one suspects that they may never achieve it.

>If you ask me the way they make hotmail run on windows was to incorporate BSD code into their OS.

An interesting theory. With several flaws that I just can't be bothered to address (not least of which is the idea that to port what is essentially 'just' a website from one OS to another requires parts of the target OS to be rewritten to include parts of the source OS)


However, let's agree to disagree on this point: you think MS are trying to turn NT/XP into FreeBSD without telling anyone and that most of it is already, and I don't.

I do agree that MS are not exactly innovative in most of their mainstream stuff, I do agree that their licencing policies are rubbish, and I acknowledge that their marketing-driven approach often gets them into trouble when they forced to backtrack (e.g. what Hotmail runs on), and I agree that they often blunder around like a bull in a china shop.

To kind of speak to the original topic, I would suggest that code sharing on the internet is the same as purchasing a book.  My desk is cluttered with ASP, PERL, Excel, VB, Access, SQL, JS, JAVA, BLAH-BLAH, Teach Yourself This or That, and how many O'Reilly animals are there? Each one is crammed with code examples that I have utilized in many an original product. The base line is, whatever you need to do, has been done and maybe better than you could do it (unless you've recently created an independant language).  For those of you who can remember, I belive Yahoo used to run its own ASP/JSP type langauage following its own exclusive protocols. Turnover rates and software limitations made them ditch that, I believe, whereas developers promptly began seeing what the net was doing and trying to simply improve upon what was done.  Ever heard the expression that there exists nothing new under the sun? In terms of creating new scripts, its been done before. If an employer hires someone who doesn't possess a decent understanding of developing client-side applications and server-side applications then they hired someone who doesn't even know their back-side from their front.

Some people say they are afraid of heights. With me its table widths.

strongm,

>> Good God! You've got a real M$ axe to grind, haven't you?

Thank you… Thank you…. Thank you….

I knew most of that myself but could never have backed it up with the facts as you did. I get so tired of the endless stream of cr@p online.

So thank you very much for taking the time to post all the facts!

By way of contrast you here very little from M$. I even had lunch once with a M$ dude and asked him why they don't ever respond to some of these baseless allegations. He said… well I don't remember what he said but basically he was bored by it.

By the way did I say THANK YOU!

-pete

Just a correction in to an earlier post. I said that NT was based to a large extent on Free BSD. I meant to say BSD, which has been around since the 70's. It was free, but they didn't start calling it Free BSD until the 90's.

Back when NT was first released it was very obvious that it was a Unix flavour. In fact it was based on Mica, a project started by DEC in the late 80's. They shelved the project and their chief architect went to work for MS. Soon after NT was born. If you watched the early NT boot it looked a lot like Unix, and even identified itself as Mica at various points.
When I mentioned that NT was based on BSD unix in an earlier post it was just to support the argument that free software was a good idea, not to cast MS in a bad light.
Smart programmers will reuse good code. Free software enables that to happen on a grand scale.

"Good writers borrow, Great writers steal", E.B. White?

There is no such things as free code or everything is free code it depends on your viewpoint.
At some point a group of people sat down and started creating a compiler. They decided what core functions to include, how the variables would be referenced, the format of a string concatenation and a boolean if statement.
Now, someone had to write the first program to prove the thing actually worked, someone had to test out all of the functions, someone had to write the first book on how to use their brand spanking new language. So in essence every core elemt of the language has already been used and published.

Ok, so is the free code on the internet ruining the trade? I would have to think not. First there are a great deal of books down at the bookstore if I need to look something up. So without the internet I would basically be using the books as reference material. I think, in fact, that the internet is probably opening the trade up more. Instead of everyone staying inside the same coding guidelines that are outlined in the books and slowly learning new ones as people stumble upon them and write a book, the entire process evolves at a much faster pace over the internet, with reference sites that can be differant each time you look and technical forums where your words are shared with thousands instead of just your coworkers.
Just my opinion, but I think the free code on the internet is a positive thing for the trade, how people use it, on the other hand, is another story.

I had a couple comments about the conversation earlier, but will keep it brief, I am in no way trying to start an argument, just attempting to make some salient points:

Linux does make a bit of money but not nearly as much as MS.  They sell the CDs on which they have the copies of their software.  They also sell support and documentation.  This is how they make money. - Umm, Linux who?

The Internet itself is based on a Free standard, TCP/IP - Again, hmmm... free standards?
I don't see anyone getting royalties from xml, html, css, IEEE 802 communications protocols, IEEE 1394, how about several authentication methods (IEEE 1363?)....
My point is that standards are always free, and by definition are made for people to freely use them

Joe's code spits out an error code before breaking in a specific way, my code spits out an error code before breaking in a similar fashion. Who cheated off who? This is an assumption that has to little data to solely decide upon (BSD and MS "similar errors" content above)


We are payed for our vocabulary skills: technical writing, coding against strict vocabularies, boolean true/false values instead of trinary yes/maybe/no values. Just a thought.

-Tarwn

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This space has nothing in it, it's all ni your imagination

Hmm, looking through some of the posted articles i see their is actual proof behind the assertation that Windows uses BSD (I still disagree that the argument I pointed out above could be considered proof). those MS bastards, for using a free product...
"virtually every computer operating system we use today --including Microsoft Windows, Microsoft NT/2000/XP, OS/2, Linux, and every commercial version of UNIX -- contains at least some BSD code"

Hm, guess it wasn't just windows.

And another assertation above: "I am sure MS would like to buy BSD or Linux..."

BSD and Linux are both non-saleable, making this point...pointless.

I'm sorry I had to add to the off-topic discussion, I'm not a fanatic about any one system, i just like good presentation of facts and dislike mis-representations. I apologize for anything that may come off as argumentary, I've had to much coffee today :)

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
This space has nothing in it, it's all ni your imagination

Truth (as i see it) about Open Source ...

if you are running a system like Intel Solaris (which i am) then you have a problem getting hold of applications to do certain jobs, except in the opensource community.

As nice as it would be to go for an application that has been put through it's paces to a very heavy degree by full time paid professionals, we run samba, apache, squid, ghostscript, html2ps and a whole host of other much smaller programs.  we almost have to in order to get things working.

yes it would be possible to get hold of the full adobe software for solaris intel, maybe, but it is apparently not as stable as Ghostscript and is not as fast.
Yes it would be possible to get a netscape server to run our web applications, but it doesn't support the plugins needed to get our Oracle server connected via HTML (which by the way oracle provide a copy of even though it's roots are opensource).
Yes it would be nice to run Suns PClink software (sparc only)
Yes we could run netscapes proxy server (which is slow, awkward and costly, plus less configurable)
Yes we could probably find an application that converts html into Postscript that can be run from a command prompt

but they aren't better, just different.

Zantor,

Mica was based on VMS, not Unix.

>I meant to say BSD, which has been around since the 70's. It was free, but they didn't start calling it Free BSD until the 90's.

Well, the first BSD release was in 1977, so I'd prefer it if you said 'late 70s'. And it wasn't free. Up until 1989 you had to pay AT&T a source licence fee, since there was no binary-only release and the code was based on Bell's 32/V, a Vax port of Bell's Unix. In summer 1989, the (TCP/IP) networking code was split out of the main release (the networking code was not based on anything in 32/V, which is why it could be split out) as Networking Release 1. This was the first freely-redistributable code from Berkeley. The greatly expanded Network Release 2 (precursor to NetBSD, FreeBSD et al), including most (but not all) of the kernel and familiar Unix tools and utilities, came out in 1991. NR2 was probably the first good example of how free code and the user community can be a 'good thing', since most of the tools and utilities were written from scratch by the Unix community; only the kernel elements were written by Berkely.

strongm, you get a star for knowing your stuff :)

Actually Unix was originally free. The US anti-trust laws of the time prevented a phone company from making money selling Operating systems. When the "monopoly" was broken up (Baby Bells etc), this no longer applied and AT&T reclaimed what was theirs and started charging for it. Also, one should not confuse the BSD code with the AT&T code. The BSD code was generally either improved versions of what was distibuted with the AT&T Unix, or virgin code designed to fill perceived gaps in the AT&T distribution.
The BSD code was always free because of the fact that the research money came from public funds.

>The BSD code was always free because of the fact that the research money came from public funds.

No it wasn't. I've already detailed this in this thread. You can keep claiming this as many times as you like, but it is completely untrue. I'll repeat: the first free  BSD release was Net1 in 1989 (and it was just the networking stuff). Sure, there were earlier BSD releases, but they cost money: a) tape cost, b) AT&T licence cost (oh, and early BSD releases were hardly Unix; the first BSD release was really just a version of Pascal)

>Also, one should not confuse the BSD code with the AT&T code

Who has confused this?

>Actually Unix was originally free

No, it wasn't (and for the first 6 years or so of its life it was only really available to groups within Bell). Again, you can keep claiming this until the cows come home. It won't make it true. The actual situation (and the reason some people seem to believe that Unix was originally free, and to which you allude) is that AT&T were not, as a result of some anti-trust issues from the 50s, allowed to sell Unix; they were, however, allowed to licence it (for somewhere around about $400 from vague recollection; of course this licence fee went up dramatically once the anti-trust stuff lapsed in 77/78). About the only 'free' licences made available were those to a number of universities (Berkeley being one of them), and that didn't really start until about 1975 or so.

A great thread with alot of good info.

I also do not agree with alot of MS's politics, but two questions:

1. Where would alot of software developers, (and this industry as a whole), be if there wasn't any free code?

2. And more so, where would alot of programers, (and the this industry as a whole), be if MS weren't the way they are (agressive), or didn't dominate the private/small business market to the extent that they do, or didn't even exist.

Would those same people even be programers or work in this branch at all? Would the industry be better off? Or worse?

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i know that i would be where i am even if microsoft hadn't created anything ... i grew up with non MS boxes, moved into a university using VAX VMS systems, and went on to Unix boxes.

the world would be a significantly different place, and i would have to use Unix clients on our network, but i would probably still be here.

However, that said, i <shudder> would not like to see microsoft go away overnight ... their software may be sh*te, but it is a fairly good client, and they have (through fair means and fowl) put together packages of Office functionality

the shudder btw was because 4 years ago i probably would have wanted a world without MS ... and it's a shocking thought :)

packages of Office functionality
StarOffice and OpenOffice.org :)
That way I don't have to deal with these annoying licensed excel plugins that 3rd party companies make (read sell) to convince companies that excel is a database driven report generator...I'm not bitter :)

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Good questions CCLINT. I suspect we'd be in a similar position to now, just with a different demon dominating the desktop market.

It's interesting how perspectives change. It wasn't all that long ago (15 years?) that people cheered valiant little Microsoft for taking on and beating the nasty IBM. Now, of course, everyone is looking for the new plucky little company (or movement) that will successfully take on the demon of Microsoft...

>It's interesting how perspectives change.

You've got that right!

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If this post contains any suggestions for the use or distribution of code, components or files of any sort, it is still your responsibility to assure that you have the proper license and distribution rights to do so!}