Open Source, Free Software, and Public Domain

[Rui Miguel Seabra]

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 21:53, Exile In Paradise wrote:
> Generically, Rui's question begs the return question, which was better
> for users? That M$ had a codebase to start from that was public domain,
> or for Windows users to be kept off the net until someone told them
> about WinSock?

Oh, by then it wasn't an issue. The majority of the computer population
did not even think seriously about using Windows ;)

And most net-people were running on some kind of Unix.

> Having M$ steal BSD's code  could be said to have created more problems
> for the rest of the world than it solved for the users, but it DID give
> the Windows users the ability to get on the Internet...

Like I said, by then it wasn't a serious issue. They weren't so
"restricted" to Windows as nowadays.

> So, for Windows users it was a benefit that the BSD folks had a codebase
> out there that M$ could incorporate.

Much the same as it was a benefit for slaves when they ate a little more
when their master was in a particularly good mood...

> The RFC's are public domain right?

Not necessarily, and most are not.

> Why shouldn't there be a public domain TCP/IP core that implements them?

Maybe there is, I don't know (nor do I really care).

> If TCP/IP software was GPL, thats fine... M$ would have still had the
> standard and probably other stacks to work from too... we would have all
> suffered more from their steeper learning curve then, but it would not
> have made a lick of difference from the standpoint of slowing them down.

I think it would. Look at the time they took killing Netscape :)
Had they started from the beginning... I can't even dare thinking about
it.

Rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

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