McBride: "Linux Is a Copy of UNIX"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 1st May 2008 19:41 UTC
Legal Speaking of soap operas, there's one soap opera in the technology world that has been going on for so long that nobody really seems to know why it was ever started, whatever all the different moves have been over the years, or whoever lost or won which battle. Just like a true soap opera, you can just jump right in the middle of it and feel like you've always been part of the regular audience. The SCO saga is such a case.
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RE[2]: Comment by kittynipples
by superman on Thu 1st May 2008 21:18 UTC in reply to "RE: Comment by kittynipples"
superman
Member since:
2006-08-01

> And only copying someone's ideas to make something similar, or exactly the same

Linux implement POSIX. Linux does not copy Unix.
It's like Firefox implementing HTML. Firefox is not copying IE, It's just implementing HTML.

Reply Parent Score: 14

aesiamun Member since:
2005-06-29

Ouch...IE innovative?

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pompous stranger Member since:
2006-05-28

Correction: only one company was innovative enough to buy another company's code and rename it Internet Explorer.

Reply Parent Score: 1

systyrant Member since:
2007-01-18

Wasn't Mozilla a spin off of Netscape or something like that?

Sadly IE, until version 8, hasn't done very well (from a technical point of view) at making a really good quality browser that supports generally accepted standards laid out by the W3C. Of course that hasn't hurt it's ability to dominate the market, but it's made designing a compliant website a lot hard. Thanks for the innovation Microsoft. We could've done it without you. ;)

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lemur2 Member since:
2007-02-17

No, Firefox is copying Netscape, and both Netscape and IE are copying Mosaic, however, only one of them had to use Mosaic code to do it. The other line was innovative enough to implement it on their own.


No. You have the wrong idea here.

"Copying" in a legal sense (ie in order to violate copyright) requires that there be a direct copy of the lines of code. There are no lines of code from Mosaic in Netscape. There are probably no lines of code left from Netscape in Firefox.

Just because two things perform the same function does not mean they are copies of one another.

Is a diesel engine the same as a gas turbine engine (aka a jet engine)? No? Is either one the same as a petrol engine? No? Are they copies of one another ... of course not. Yet all three of these different engine types burn hydrocarbon fuels and produce rotary motion.

Edited 2008-05-01 23:53 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

mallard Member since:
2006-01-06

Actually, Firfox *is* Netscape, at least it's based on Netscape's source code.

IE *is* Mosaic "Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." (From IE6 About... box), although IE7 apparently no longer contains any Mosaic code, it is still highly likely to have design/structure features inherited from Mosaic.

Netscape did copy Mosaic to an extent, but Mosaic was far from the first graphic web browser (WorldWideWeb, ViolaWWW and Erwise all pre-dated it).

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Oliver Member since:
2006-07-15

Well HTML is free, try to implement e.g. H264 and sell the product. Tadaaaa, so it has nothing to do if you implement something, but if it's free to use!

Reply Parent Score: 2

tyrione Member since:
2005-11-21

> And only copying someone's ideas to make something similar, or exactly the same

Linux implement POSIX. Linux does not copy Unix.
It's like Firefox implementing HTML. Firefox is not copying IE, It's just implementing HTML.


Linux mostly implements POSIX.

Reply Parent Score: 2