multiple rewrites of open source

[Tom Buskey]

Bill Sconce said:
>On Tue, 18 Feb 2003 22:06:48 -0500
>Derek Martin <gnhlug at sophic.org> wrote:
>
>>    [...]    Maybe we need a Ministry
>> of Brain-Death Prevention to oversee open-source projects...
>> 
>> Heh.  I amuse me.
>
>
>Heh, heh.  Me too.
>
>Isn't it characteristic of the "Bazaar" that it's chaotic and messy,
>and that projects are subject to survival-of-the-fittest?
>

And it's a programmer scratching an itch.  Where would we be if RMS 
hadn't created all those TECO macros to create emacs?  Bill Joy not 
being satisfied with ed?  We might be using a wordstar like editor.

How many text editors are there?  How many OSes has emacs been ported 
to?  VI too! (I've used both on MacOS system 7 btw).  Once upon a time 
(in the DOS world) there were multiple free/shareware word processors too.

How many email readers?  News readers?  Window managers?

Larry Wall with patch and perl?  Ken Thomson wanting to play his space 
simulation game?  Andrew T. being unhappy with the Unix license and 
writing Minix to teach?  Linus being unhappy with Minix and hacking his 
own?  Multiple others unhappy with the Minix license and jumping on 
Linux?

I'm sure there's lots more good examples.  Just some food for thought 
for the day.

-- 
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Tom Buskey