On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 03:00:24 +0800, Prem Vilas Fortran Rara <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 19:59:51 +0800, Rafael 'Dido' Sevilla > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Last sentence: "The revolutionary software technologies..." I don't > > know if this is true. Unix as one example, was not developed within the > > academe, but by Bell Labs R&D in the early 1970's. People around here > > can give many other examples besides. This is a debatable issue and one > > that I think your article would be better off not mentioning. > > I reinforced the argument above with this: > Revolutionary software technologies or derivatives mostly did not come > from R&D departments but from the academe. An example is the Unix > operating system developed at Bell Labs. Though it was deemed > propietary and the technology itself came from R&D but derivatives of > it like GNU/Linux or BSD operating systems have utilities developed by > university software researchers. Research culture in R&D emanate from > the academic training grounds and even old proprietary models are > based on the culture of sharing and peer interaction. The academe will > always be a breeding ground for innovative ideas. > > Is it sound? Historically it is sound. Open source development can be aptly referred to as the scientific method of software development. Science and mankind in general did not progress by the restriction of ideas and their expression. Rather these flourished through extensive sharing and accumulated, continuous open review and improvement. In a sense the current practice of relying on software monocultures and proprietary software mentality can be deemed as an anomaly to the natural progress of computing. As for the academe being a breeding ground for new ideas - hopefully it does stay that way, as commercial interests do want to dictate how the academe should train students in preparation for "the industry", and its fast creeping even in the curricula that the students take. A real fear would be the time that the academe would churn out graduates who are merely users than builders of the future computing infrastructure. Sadly though the reality in most schools looks like it is going that way... -- Paolo Alexis Falcone [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
