On Sunday 02 January 2005 05:14, Shawn wrote: > http://www.moonviewscientific.com/essays/software_lifecycle.htm
this piece is , IMHO, littered with critical flaws. for instance, saying that UNIX succeeded because it was the best OS invented in its day. that isn't why it succeeded, and VAXers will tell you it wasn't even the best OS. it also states that it muscled out virtually all other OSes, which is also a rewriting of the past. it did gain numerical dominance in the data center, but never extended that success out of the data center and even in the data center it shared the market with many non-UNIX OSes (Netware, VAX/VMS and mainframe technology to name 3) or saying that embedded software is a place FLOSS can't go, which is demonstrably false given a range of examples in the industry. e.g. Linux itself (ask Linksys ;). or his interpretation of events regarding the web server market which are similarly superficial and errant. or his implied axiom that commercial == closed source, or that innovation does not happen in the creative commons, or that there is no means to have a capitalistic model that both innovates _and_ starts from day 0 with Free Software (despite there being such examples around) or his contention that OS innovation is slow and incremental today because it's mature, which also wrong. Plan9 shows how "immature" our production operating systems are, yet our production OSes aren't innovating quickly. this is not because they are mature, but because they are a now a commodity due to having become "good enough" in a segment gives very little benefit versus what you can achieve in the application stack (where most innovation is happening these days) or how he assumes the Solaris code will be licensed GPL-compatibly (which is almost certainly not to be the case) or how Microsoft is "fighting OSS every inch of the way" which is clearly not the case as they release OSS of their own (e.g. that installer thing), support certain types of OSS openly (which i think is likely due to the author having a fairly limited understanding of what OSS is?) and even is likely quite happy with certain OSS products being available on its platform right now. there are so many such inaccuracies in this article that, despite it being conceptually friendly to business, i'd be very hesitant to hand it out in front of someone knowledgeable. -- Aaron J. Seigo GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
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