[Gllug] Gates, self proclaimed father of open-source

[Alain Williams]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 10:31:48AM +0000, Paul Nasrat wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 09:24:53AM -0000, ae wrote:
> > Don't know if anyone has read this yet but it's amusing to say the least.
> > What worries me is that he may even genuinly believe the rubbish he comes
> > out with.
> > 
> > Gates also took some credit for the genesis of open-source software. He said
> > Microsoft made it possible by standardizing computers: "Really, the reason
> > you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should
> > be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines," he
> > said."
> 
> Neal Stephenson, makes a similar point in In the beginning there was the
> command line.  Certainly the availability of low cost, standard
> architecture machines made computing available to a larger base, and
Quite. But what was the original open architecture hardware ?
Anyone else remember the PDP 11 ? Interesting that this was the original h/ware for Unix.

> Maybe without the PC market, development of alternative OSen would have
> been restricted to a smaller developer base.
The GNU project started at about the same time as the first IBM PC was introduced
& certainly before it made any impact.

> However, Mr Gates seems to ignore other "contributions" such as IBM (and
> everyones favourite clone explosion), etc.  

-- 
Alain Williams

#include <std_disclaimer.h>

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