Open Source Links

It's virtually impossible to use Unix or the Internet seriously without being affected (knowingly or otherwise :-) by the culture of open source software, which among things is reponsible for the creation of tools without which neither Unix nor the Internet as we know them would exist.

Here are some discussions about the nature of open source software, and why you really do want to use and support it. :-)

First of all, just calling something open does not make it so... which brings up the question: just what is open source software anyway?
The open source home page
The (in :-)famous Halloween Documents, and a rather amusing commentary about them
Neal Stephenson's essay, In the Beginning was the Command Line
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, an article by Eric S. Raymond describing the virtues of the Linux programming model, and its sequels.
We live in an age in which several open source versions of Unix are available; one of the most prominent of these is Linux
If you (or the people you work for :-) have an intrinsic distrust of software that doesn't cost real money, you might be interested in the following:
- The Enterprise Linux page
- A research paper which concludes that open source software can be more reliable than proprietary software
The UNIX versus NT Organization is "dedicated to setting the facts straight about the various commercial and Open Source UNIX operating systems as they relate to Microsoft Windows NT"; they offer a comparison of Windows NT 4.0 vs. Unix which features Linux, and presents some interesting information for people who need to choose between the two
Open Source and Code Quality, a Linux advocacy article by Linas Vepstas

Last Update: 2001/05/03 ______________________________ [Steven's home page]