Software Freedom, Money, and Proprietary, and What Next!

Folks,

Software Freedom, Money, and Proprietary, and What Next!

 

Just for fun ( 😛 ) for our talk/discussion, we enjoy a real roller-coaster ride to whiz through the fun of how we got to the modern day computing we know today, revelling in the antics of the various Big Boys! We also have the elephant of Social Media, The ‘Cloud’, and ‘others’. And there is also FLOSS…

Over beer, we share some ideas of:

 

What Next?!

We have a fantastic history here, but where is it going?

 

All welcome at our favored venue of:

 

7:30pm Thursday 17/05/2018

Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem

1 Brewhouse Yard
Nottingham, NG1 6AD

Phone: 0115 9473171

 

We have the ground floor (apt-ly haunted ) snug room.

Just ask the friendly bar staff for Linux or follow the Penguins!

 

Some of us will be there earlier for some of their fine food and warmth.

 

All welcome!

See ya there,
Martin

 

Listed here is just some of the rich history of FLOSS[*] and some of the inevitable rivalry:

 

* FLOSS: Free/Libre Open Source Software

Free software means the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. See: gnu.org

 

“GNU, which stands for Gnu’s Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.”

— Richard Stallman

“If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I’ve won.”

— Linus Torvalds

 

1984:
A gifted developer and prickly, uncompromising individual, Stallman quit his job at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1984 to found what he considered to be a social movement guided by ethical principles. He set forth those goals in the GNU Manifesto…

 

1991:

“… I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready…”

— What would you like to see most in minix?

 

1991:
Stallman and his collaborators had conjured an entire free operating system: GNU/Linux. See: The history of Linux: how time has shaped the penguin

 

2001:
Ballmer: “Linux is a cancer”

MS Linux: Shipping in November 2003

 

2007:
Microsoft takes on the free world:

“Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you…”

“… The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the “free world” – people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet…”

 

2008:
Meet Bill Gates, the Man Who Changed Open Source Software

“… At the invitation of the company’s chief legal minds – Smith and Gutierrez – Ramji sat down with Gates, chief software architect Ray Ozzie, and a few others to discuss whether Microsoft could actually start using open source software. Ramji and Ozzie were on one side of the argument, insisting that Microsoft embrace open source, and Gutierrez offered a legal framework that could make that possible. But other top executives strongly challenged the idea.

Then Bill Gates stood up.

He walked to the whiteboard and drew a diagram of how the system could work, from copyrights to code contribution to patents, and he said – in no uncertain terms – that the company had to make the move…”

 

2013:
Linus Torvalds: I will not change Linux to “deep-throat Microsoft”

 

2013:
The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, once said, ‘If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I’ve won.’ Microsoft yesterday released one of its cash cows, Microsoft Office, for Android. Since Microsoft has a very vague idea of what users want and is suffering from lock-in, the app is just an Android front end of Office 365 and is accessible only by the paid users…

 

2015:
Microsoft Loves Linux:

“… Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put up a slide proclaiming “Microsoft ♥ Linux”. Wow! What a great slide and what a change for Microsoft!…”

 

2015:
Microsoft has developed its own Linux. Repeat. Microsoft has developed its own Linux – Redmond reveals Azure Cloud Switch, its in-house software-defined networking OS

Microsoft Built Its Own Linux Because Everyone Else Did

 

2016:
Microsoft embraces Linux — way too late:

“… we found out Microsoft was offering SQL Server running on Linux. Then at Build last week, Microsoft introduced “native Ubuntu Linux binaries running on Windows” and treated us to a demo of Bash on Windows 10.

The fact that Microsoft now supports SQL Server on Linux isn’t really a technical development — it’s a business move…”

 

2016:
Yes, that’s Linus Torvalds happily chatting with Microsoft folks at a tech conference

 

Enjoy!