age of FLOSS [was- Re: [ILUG] ICT Expo 2006 update (ideas on helping the community) ]

[Brian Foster]

  | Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:14:31 +0000
  | From: "Noirin Plunkett" <plunkett at gmail.com>
  | 
  | On 13 Mar 2006 12:04:19 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan <ciaran at fsfe.org> wrote:
  |  > [ The ] software [ has existed for ] 22-year[s ... ]
  | 
  | Now you just sound deranged. Linux isn't that old [ ... ]

 Ciaran's age is conservative; arguably a better epoch would
 be the release of Unix 7th Edition, in c.1979 (c.27 years).
 The reason?  Because more-or-less everything in the *ix world
 is based on that:  The POSIX standards (and X/Open), all the
 BSDs, most of the "common" utilities (including the Bourne
 shell family (e.g., bash(1)), and on and on and on.  And on.

 Unix itself is c.10 years older, albeit there aren't that
 many people around who used pre-7th Edition.  (I myself
 used both 6th Edition and PWB (albeit both just a little
 bit), and have friends who used 5th Edition.)

 Some software used nowadays on Linux predates even that
 (Emacs, I _think_, assuming you start with the TECO-based
 version).  Not sure about TeX...?  TECO itself (rewritten
 in C) is available for Linux, and the original versions
 date back to the early 1960s.

 Ciaran's date is, IIRC, approximately that of the start of
 the GNU project (arguably the start of FLOSS); that date,
 and the 7th Edition release date, are perhaps the best two
 candidates, even _if_ you are talking strictly about the
 Linux kernel (in which case the Minux date, which is about
 the same as the GNU date (IIRC), has a claim).

 Not that any of this matters, except that it isn't Ciaran
 who is sounding deranged.

cheers!
	-blf-

p.s. then, of course, until the late 1960s, most software
     was either freely shared, or available on reasonable
     terms.  User Groups existed to exchange and improve
     software.  not quite FLOSS, but similar.

p.p.s. I believe Dr Peter H Salus' book, being serialised
       on Groklaw, goes more into this early history (at
       least of *ix).

-- 
Experienced (20+ yrs) kernel/software Eng: | Brian Foster   Montpellier,
 • Unix, embedded, &tc;  • Linux;  • doc;  | blf at utvinternet.ie   FRANCE
 • IDL, automated testing, process, &tc.   |  Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
Résumé (CV) http://www.blf.utvinternet.ie  |     http://www.stopesso.com