Comments on: Open Source Revolutions http://undefined.com/ia/2007/12/20/open-source-revolutions/ Agile & Open Source Software, Economics, Liberty and Entrepreneurship Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:29:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Walter R. Moore http://undefined.com/ia/2007/12/20/open-source-revolutions/#comment-256434 Walter R. Moore Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:31:53 +0000 http://undefined.com/ia/2007/12/20/open-source-revolutions/#comment-256434 "...you missed the really, really, really big one. The World Wide Web is a free and open standard" Amen to that! They (the critics of OSS) can't see it, any more than a fish thinks about the fact that it is water. “…you missed the really, really, really big one. The World Wide Web is a free and open standard”

Amen to that! They (the critics of OSS) can’t see it, any more than a fish thinks about the fact that it is water.

]]> By: Piers Cawley http://undefined.com/ia/2007/12/20/open-source-revolutions/#comment-256094 Piers Cawley Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:55:06 +0000 http://undefined.com/ia/2007/12/20/open-source-revolutions/#comment-256094 Emacs wasn't the first editor with a built in programming language - I believe TECO was Turing complete, and the original host editor the the <b>E</b>diting <b>mac</b>ro<b>s</b>. Still free software though. Don't forget the enabling technologies for many of those revolutions. Perl, Python, Ruby, TeX. The revolutionary nature of some of those may be debatable, but they enabled revolutions. Also, before Usenet, there was UUCP based email and I find it hard to think of a single net technology that's had a bigger effect than that. But you missed the really, really, really big one. The World Wide Web is a free and open standard. Tim Berners-Lee released all the specs and his original source code as free software. Emacs wasn’t the first editor with a built in programming language - I believe TECO was Turing complete, and the original host editor the the Editing macros. Still free software though.

Don’t forget the enabling technologies for many of those revolutions. Perl, Python, Ruby, TeX. The revolutionary nature of some of those may be debatable, but they enabled revolutions.

Also, before Usenet, there was UUCP based email and I find it hard to think of a single net technology that’s had a bigger effect than that.

But you missed the really, really, really big one. The World Wide Web is a free and open standard. Tim Berners-Lee released all the specs and his original source code as free software.

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