From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261234AbTEAMbX (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 May 2003 08:31:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261236AbTEAMbX (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 May 2003 08:31:23 -0400 Received: from 34.mufa.noln.chcgil24.dsl.att.net ([12.100.181.34]:40701 "EHLO tabby.cats.internal") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261234AbTEAMbW (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 May 2003 08:31:22 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Jesse Pollard To: Jeff Randall , Larry McVoy , "Downing, Thomas" , Larry McVoy , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!] Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 07:43:17 -0500 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] References: <170EBA504C3AD511A3FE00508BB89A9202032941@exnanycmbx4.ipc.com> <20030430152041.GA22038@work.bitmover.com> <20030430105554.A15778@uph.com> In-Reply-To: <20030430105554.A15778@uph.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <03050107431700.26224@tabby> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wednesday 30 April 2003 10:55, Jeff Randall wrote: > On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 08:20:41AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: > > My point wasn't about theft, it was about reimplementation. > > I stand behind that point, what I've seen for more than a decade is > > reimplementation after reimplementation. I'm not saying there is no > > value to that or that it is illegal or that there are no improvements > > (compare Unix diff to GNU diff if you want to see some imrovements). > > There is tons of value in having free versions of useful tools. > > There is also tons of value in the creation of new work. > > > > What I haven't seen is a lot of revolutionary work. All of that seems > > to come from commercial companies and at a pretty slow pace. There are > > a lot of false starts, commercial failures, whatever. But a few slam > > dunks as well. > > Mosaic was pretty revolutionary for it's time.. as was Sendmail.. > source was available for both from the start. Mosaic is/was derived from two sources - gopher for network communication (derived from network news and/or e-mail) and SGML combined with display only word processor applications (postscript and pdf previewers). sendmail was derived from a message routing protocol originally using UUCP, written to promote research in message routing, and flexibility to reduce the re-implementation time required on earlier applications. (somewhere there is a quote from Eric Allman along the lines of "...If I had known how popular it would become I would have asked for a dime for each installation...") Neither looked revolutionary at the time.