Star Would The Internet Exist Without Linux?
Linked by David Adams on Wed 29th Oct 2008 21:04 UTC, submitted by irbis
Linux Would the internet as we know it exist without Linux? "Absolutely not", says Rich Menga. "Where Linux shines the most is in its server applications". In the 1990's "There were thousands of Mom n' Pop ISPs that operated out of a garage and the vast majority of them were all running Linux. Windows couldn't do it back then and neither could MacOS. What would you have used that you could afford? Netware? Lotus Domino? HP-UX (that requires those refrigerator-sized HP servers)? Linux was literally the only OS out there that had the right price (free), ran similar to a Unix and could use existing computers of the time to connect customers. The internet as we know it today predominantly runs on Linux. There's an extremely high probability that the internet connection you're using right now is connected through a Linux server - and routed through many other Linux servers along the way."
E-mail Print r 12   84 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/fs8
Permalink for comment 335567
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE[2]: Yes it would
by lemur2 on Thu 30th Oct 2008 00:24 UTC in reply to "RE: Yes it would"
lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

We might not have the comical explosion of distributions that Linux has, but the technological basis and the freedom to develop for the BSD platform would have allowed the thundering hordes contributing to Linux a medium every bit (no pun intended) as accessible.


Nice in theory, but I don't think so.

With BSD, one can toil away and have satisfaction in producing great code ... only to see it adopted by some software megacorp, changed into incompatibility, incorporated into a proprietary product, pushed, advertised, and sold to the public.

The megacorps gets the profit fruits of your labour, and the general public essentially get ripped off. You get virtually nothing.

At least contributing under a copyleft license, the following occurs: (1) other people contribute to your project, so that the code remains open but gets better and better, (2) you get an improved codebase, (3) the code remains open so you get the credit/kudos and continuing visibility for the pieces that you wrote, and (3) the public does not get ripped off.

Everybody wins (except perhaps for the software megacorp).

This I believe is the ONLY reason why you get "the thundering hordes contributing to Linux".

You just wouldn't get that happening with the BSD license, IMO.

Edited 2008-10-30 00:31 UTC

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: -2