Guest post by InfoWorld’s Neil McAllister offers 20 questions to test your knowledge of the open source and free software movements. Which was the first commercial Linux distribution? How many separate clauses make up the typical BSD-style open source license? What is the difference between the GPL and the LGPL?
15/20
As with all trivia, you either know it or you don’t. But this one gets in to some cool subtleties.
Same.
And although Linux could be an acronym for “Linux is not unix”, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Like Git, it’s simply named after its creator.
I was wondering about that as well since I got it wrong. I thought linux was just Linus with the x at the end. I never heard anyone say it was an acronym.
Yeah, they’re just plain wrong on that one.
Agreed.
IIRC Linux was originally an amalgamation of Linus and Unix (and wasn’t even named by Linus).
If Linux is now considered a recursive acronym, then that’s a later adaptation (a little bit like how Personal Home Pages was changed to PHP Home Pages)
PHP was indeed born as “Personal Home Page” but was later named “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”. As far as I know it was never named “PHP Home Pages”.
Sorry, yes you’re right.
Thankfully that’s still a recursive acronym so my example wasn’t a poor one – inspite of my explanation being wrong….
I got an 18/20. I missed Doom and Ingres.
Not a scientific test, but it does show if your are familiar with the territory. I have written several papers and presentations in school related to Software Patents and Free Software. They are important topics for this age.
I like to use the example of what might have happened had Microsoft gotten its way with Internet Explorer and ActiveX. We came very close to having a proprietary, closed Internet in the United States. A similar battle is being waged over multimedia formats on the Net. Many people don’t care, as long as they have their Shiny.
I’ll take Open over Cool any day. Given freedom, people will create the Cool. Given the Cool without the freedom, they eventually both go away.
[Dang, this soapbox is pretty tall, I’m afraid I might fall when I step off.]
Editted fer spelzing errs
Edited 2010-09-13 18:42 UTC
Also 18/20, and missed Doom vs Ingress.
I am pretty sure that “Linux is Linux is not UNIX) is pretty much nonsense. IIRC Linus wanted to something like ‘Freix’, but the FTP master renamed it to Linux to honor his name.
Yeah, that question is very dodgy. As far as I am aware “Linux” is simply “LINus’s UniX”. I’ve never heard of “Linux is not Unix”: I suspect someone is confused with “GNU’s not Unix” here.
Hi,
That’s what I’ve always heard too.
Although, when you put it like that you have to wonder why it wasn’t called “Lunix”… 🙂
– Brendan
Edited 2010-09-14 06:21 UTC
Lunix…
AT&T trademark ownership prevented that disaster. If name contains UNIX, then you get sued.
Agreed.
“Linux is not Unix” doesn’t make sense anyway as Linux is a kernel (much like Mach and Hurd) where as Unix is an OS. Thus the comparison doesn’t work.
Edited 2010-09-14 13:57 UTC
[q]Also 18/20, and missed Doom vs Ingress.
Yes, that question was complete nonsense. Linux isn’t an acronym at all, so I picked that despite knowing what Yacc stood for.
I saw the documentary. It was supposed to be called Freax but the FTP maintainer (dunno his name) didnt like it and suggested Linux. Linux is not a recursive acronym as pointed out earlier. That is just plain wrong.
Although not scientific it is interesting to see what you know. I scored 14/20 which is a bit higher than I thought I would have. Amazing what guessing can do for you
16/20
as with all iq tests , your ability to guess is more valuable than the what you know
I got 17/20.
I thought Apache was copyleft (since it was incompatible with GPLv2). CPL was the correct answer.
I just guessed that Microsoft was the one with the GPL violations; I had never heard of violations by any of the other ones. (It was Skype.)
Also, I guessed that Yacc was a recursive acronym without thinking about it (Yet Another Compiler Compiler…). Obviously, that was wrong, but I’m pretty sure that Linux is not a recursive acronym either. I think that the acronym they give was made up later in order to give an explanation for the name.
I also was surprised by the Linux (Linux is not UNIX) answer. I’d never heard it refer to that way before. I’d always read it was “Linus’ UNIX”. Otherwise I left they had a pretty good mix of stuff in there.
13/20… that’s an F (or an E) around here.
Missed how much profit the GPL allows you to make (here the test was wrong), the first commercial Linux, the open-vs-free licenses (here the test was wrong), the Affero license question, the GPL violation question, the recursive acronym question (yet another stupid answer on my part), and the proprietary-to-copyleft question (I was certain that the correct answer had been copylefted in 2003).
As far as I now the only incorrect answer in the test was the one about recursive acronyms. What makes you think the test was wrong at any of the points you mention?
I have 19/20, therefore quiz is wrong.
It is widely known that SuSE was first commercial distro, not Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil is known for being first Live CD distro ever.
That was only wrong answer I had. In fact not wrong, quiz is wrong. I know everything. I should get the prize.
</end_rant>
lol
Uhhh, yggdrasil wasn’t a live cd in the sense that we use it today. Or, you know, at all. And, in fact, yggdrasil is widely cited as the first commercial distro. Can you provide citation to prove suse was first?
SuSE might have been a company sooner, but I don’t believe they released a distro sooner.
I thought some of the questions were a little vague. Like the first commercial distro. I was wondering if they meant the first distro which had to be purchased to use? Or the first to offer discs you _could_ buy, but could also get for free? Or the first distro to offer commercial support? Depending on how you read it, I think it would fit almost any of the options.
The same with the GPL violations. I wasn’t sure if they meant confirmed violations, or violations which had been confirmed in court.
But for the most part, I found the quiz kind of fun and well rounded.
I only scored a 10/20.
Good to know I’m not an opensource weenie
Also, they changed question 17 that I guess had Linux done as a recursive acronym to:
“17. Over the years, free software developers have often named their programs with recursive acronyms, where the first letter of the acronym stands for the acronym itself. Which of the following names is not a recursive acronym?”
Then lists a few things with linux as an option.
Kind of lightweight.
I expected it to be more about history, but it was very license-heavy.