ESR chapter of "Open Sources" online 57
Paul Crowley writes "The table of
contents for "Open
Sources" , O'Reilly's book for the lay reader from Slashdot's
interesting-ideas department, is now available and the book itself
should be coming out later this
month; I've just now received mail warning me of a copy coming my way
sometime this week. One chapter is already available online: Eric S
Raymond's A
brief history of Hackerdom . So you can all start flaming
his attention-seeking ways again now, especially since on a related
note he's also
turned up on Slashdot's favourite news source, BBC News."
I just got a copy of Open Sources as well- Chris DiBona mentioned both
me & Slashdot in his intro. I've read the ESR and RMS sections already- both
were great.
A full fledged review of the book will be here whenever I
have time to finish reading it.
I forget. (Score:1)
http://www.dibona.com/ [dibona.com]
>2 Sam Ockman
http://www.penguincomputing.com/ [penguincomputing.com]
>3 Mark Stone
http://shell.nanospace.com/~markst/ [nanospace.com]
All members of the infamous...
Silicon Valley Linux User Group [svlug.org]
Jargon File revisited. (Score:1)
Note I'm not criticising, just pointing it out.
---
I can't understand. (Score:1)
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Hypocrisy? Or will they do The Right Thing. (Score:1)
Flame ESR's ways? Never (Score:1)
Moderators? Please? [waves hands] (Score:1)
I'd be more than glad to take the burden of moderator-power...
The importance of UUCP and news (Score:1)
When reading about the history of the
internet/unix I'm always a little annoyed that
nobody seems to appreciate the importance
of usenet news. This early groupware program,
coupled with the *large* uucp network (certainly
when compared to arpanet) was fundamental
to today's online culture.
In particular, it "unified" various discussion
forums (see sci.space.* for a living example).
It also fostered a real culture of cooperation.
The long forgotten... (Score:1)
This isn't about the history of programming, though; whatever lovely things Babbage and Pascal may have done, they weren't part of an overtly code-sharing hacker culture (even though they were sort of nerdy).
This post does raise an interesting point, though; throughout known history, deep thinkers -- always a nerdy minority in any culture, since somebody always has to harvest the food -- have tended to group together and argue. Think about the Greek philosophers, the Italian cities of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and so on. Imagine if superhacker Leonardo da Vinci had had the Internet....
And then, of course, we've always had something like the trial of Socrates, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Federal Government....
Craig
You are very kind. (Score:1)
I forget. (Score:1)
--
shudder (Score:1)
--
Sam Ockman (Score:1)
--
The long forgotten... (Score:1)
But then Mauchly and Eckert were working in the great Open Source tradition of taking Atanasoff's work, building upon it, and getting all the credit.
No mention of Hollerith, or Babbage either. And what about Blaise Pascal and...
My chapter's online, too. (Score:1)
Bruce
Uh oh (Score:1)
Bruce
Bruce, you are *TOO* modest (Score:1)
Bruce
Uh oh (Score:1)
Read the thing and judge. It's here [hams.com].
Nice work, ESR (Score:1)
*****************
So who's working on the new open source ITS system/kernel? A real-live Linux-killer fer shure!
;)
Where's the Free Speech version? (Score:1)
Is that like getting one .c file with your open source application?
Hmmmm, sounds a lot like Free Beer to me.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
Go Go ESR! (Score:1)
--
Smarten up (Score:1)
That's probably why he specifies that they are difficult parts of the OS.
instead of just "In 1991 he began developing a free Unix kernel for 386 machines using the Free Software Foundation's toolkit."
So I write a word processor in Borland Pascal (not that I would) and it's the "Borland Word Processor," right? I mean, after all - the compiler is the hardest part. Anyone could write a word processor (except, of course, the FSF couldn't write a kernel).
Say 'pop' (Score:1)
It wasn't a paper on history of computing/programming. It wasn't even a history on hacking. It was a BRIEF history on hacking.
Pascal does not fit into the definition of 'hacker'. He was basically a mathematician who wanted to be an engineer. But don't forget Lady Lovelace. She was the first programmer.... but still she was not a hacker... more of a scientist mathematician type.
Therefore, his BRIEF history of HACKING still holds.
I forget. (Score:1)
Silicon Valley Linux User Group. He's the only one I know by name *and* face. I can vouch for him being a cool guy (with social skills!).
Only know the other two by name
Sam Ockman is involved in one way or another with
the SVLUG as well.
SUN founded from Berkeley? (Score:1)
Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy were in the business school.
Bill Joy was at Berkeley, and as others have alluded, was the (first) "software guy".
I sent a correction to ESR, he said it may or may not make it into the book.
roots of open source go back a long way (Score:1)
The other notable project of yore was info-zip (which still continues, mostly in maintenance mode). Jean-Loup Gailly and a bunch of others put together a reconstructed version of PKZip (with Phil Katz' support) which makes zip and unzip now the *second* most widely available program in terms of number of platforms supported (that one that puts "Hello world" on the screen is #1). Again, info-zip pioneered the development of free software with literally an international group of developers corresponding and co-developing the code.
I first joined the info-zip mailing list in 1990, I think; along with the RISKS-L version of comp.risks those were the first net mailing lists I ever subscribed to.
phred@sunlight.portland.or.us
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