[vox] [fwd] KQED program on open source [last night]

[Bill Kendrick]

On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 10:05:29AM -0700, Richard Crawford wrote:
> Last night at Borders in Davis I picked up _The Success of Open Source_ by
> the same guy, Stephen Weber.  It looked interesting.  I've only read a
> couple of chapters, but I'm intrigued so far.  Has anyone else read this
> book?

Hadn't even heard of it!  Or him, (I don't _think_)


> One point he brings up which I'm not sure about.  He states that it's
> impossible, these days, for a single individual to write an entire
> operating system from scratch (though he doesn't hint that it was
> impossible in 1991).

Define "operating system."  Sheesh.  :^P


> I have no way of knowing whether that claim is true or not.

I agree with the claim on one hand:

  Mozilla + KDE + OpenOffice.org + Linux kernel + tools + other stuff
  Hard for one person to make that.

  Windows is pretty much all that same stuff jammed in it, except not as good
  (Internet Exporer (piece of crap), horrible window manager,
  virus-propagating office suite, a kernel, tools, and other stuff)
  Hard for one person to make that, either.

On the other hand, a basic kernel for a small embedded device...
even something like the older Palm OS?  Sure, I can see one person writing
that, _including_ the GUI widgets, API, SDK, etc.  It'd _take_ a while,
but it's not impossible.

Rambling,

-bill!