History of FOSS and stuff (was: The Silent Woman)

[Greg Rundlett]

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 9:24 PM, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 12:42 PM,  <VirginSnow at vfemail.net> wrote:
>  >  Knowing a lot does not make you "brilliant".
>
>   A'yup.  Knowledge.  Experience.  Intelligence.  Wisdom.  All
>  different things, and much more valuable together than individually.
>
>  > Without RMS the GNU tools, the GPL, Linux, and probably
>  > FOSS in general would never have come to exist.
>
>   Several thousand BSD users would beg to differ.
>
>   Software started out Free.  The idea of locking it up came later.
>
>   More specifically: Unix started out Free.  Ken Thompson gave it away
>  to anyone who asked.  John Lions published the source in a book.  BSD
>  was based on it.  Then AT&T tried to lock it all up.  BSD fought back.
>   It was a long, ugly fight, but ultimately, a Free BSD (no pun
>  intended) prevailed.
>
>   RMS has made major contributions.  RMS took the assumption many were
>  operating under and codified them into the GPL.  He recognized the
>  need for an organized campaign to protect software Freedom, and
>  actually undertook that campaign.  That's quite a lot.  But let's not
>  go too far.  We all stand upon the shoulders of giants.
>
>  -- Ben


A quick note on the subject of what Dr. Stallman has done for all of
us... Everyone generally thinks of the GPL, or the GCC or emacs.  I
always think of the "ell-ess' command.  If you read the man / info
page, you'll see

AUTHOR
       Written by Richard Stallman and David MacKenzie.

Where would we be without an ls command?

-- 
Greg

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?