Linked by David Adams on Tue 28th Oct 2008 16:14 UTC, submitted by M-Saunders
Free Software/open source often gets a bad rap for innovating. It just rips-off the work of commercial developers, right? Not so, as this Linux Format piece argues. FLOSS has pioneered, or been a catalyst in, some notable changes in the computing world. Several of these innovations are OS-related.
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Member since:2005-08-18
VCN might be open source now, but it sure didn't start that way.
Really? Wikipeda sure don't say that it started out closed-source. The keyboard is "continue". They formed RealVNC to continuue working on OSS and non-OSS versions. Obviously in order to contionue working on something that's open-source it was already open-source before.
Member since:2008-10-28
"VCN might be open source now, but it sure didn't start that way.
Really? Wikipeda sure don't say that it started out closed-source. "
Fair enough, but google for "vnc orl" and you'll find:
http://grox.net/doc/apps/vnc/free.html (Why are we giving it away?)
"When we made our high-performance CORBA implementation, omniORB, available recently, it was exceedingly popular and so we are releasing VNC on the same terms and conditions: those of the GNU General Public Licence."
and:
http://grox.net/doc/apps/vnc/internalversion.html (VNC - the internal ORL version)
"Some of the functionality of the distributed VNC system is limited when compared to the version we use within ORL. This is not because we wish to deprive the rest of the world of a more sophisticated system, but because we want VNC to be easy to download and set up [...]"
If you're in a hurry it might be easy to miss, but the copyright notice at the bottom of both pages reads 1998 -- I'm new here, but I'm not used to speak unless I know what I'm talking about! ;-)
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Member since:
2008-10-28
VCN might be open source now, but it sure didn't start that way. Even reaching for Wikipedia is enough to find out that:
"VNC was created at the Olivetti & Oracle Research Lab (ORL), which was then owned by Olivetti and Oracle Corporation. In 1999 AT&T acquired the lab, and in 2002 closed down the lab's research efforts.
[...]
Following the closure of ORL in 2002, several members of the development team (including Richardson, Harter, Weatherall and Hopper) formed RealVNC in order to continue working on open source and commercial VNC software under that name.
Several other versions of VNC have been developed from the original GPLed source code."
Being pedantic here, I know, but it really troubles me when journalists (and I'm using the term liberally) don't even bother to spend five minutes to get their facts straight.