Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 08:24:06 +0000 From: ken@mui.net To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: (Fwd) flexfax: Linux made the Wall Street Journal - the Articl Message-ID: <199804101825.IAA08226@rocksalt.mui.net>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
People, don't kill me for this one. Just thought it may help to construct a press release for the freebsd side -- perhaps provide ideas. got it from the flexfax mailing list. ken ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: "GCFL Staff" <gcfl@usa.net> To: nobody@nobody.org Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 08:56:56 +0000 Subject: flexfax: Linux made the Wall Street Journal - the Article Linux Plays a Role in 'Titanic,' Photos By NASA, but Can It Take On Microsoft? By SEAN DAVIS Dow Jones Newswires [From The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1998, page B7B] NEW YORK-The makers of "Titanic" used it to render the hit film's special effects. NASA uses it to stitch together pictures of Earth. It is free to anyone who wants it, but at least two companies are selling it. The question: What is Linux? Linux is an operating system, like Microsoft Corp.'s Windows. But unlike Windows, no one owns Linux, and its source code - the instructions its developers use to create it-is freely available. Proponents of Linux say because of this, the software stands a good chance of taking business away from Windows NT, the enterprise version of Microsoft's market-leading operating system for workstations. One commercial vendor of Linux, closely held Red Hat Software Inc., expects to sell 400,000 copies of the software at $50 each this year. The operating system generally referred to as Linux got its start in 1983. Richard Stallman, then a programmer at the artificial-intelligence lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set out to create a free alternative to Unix, the operating system developed at AT&T Corp.'s Bell Labs. Mr. Stallman dubbed his operating system GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix. (The recursive acronym is a time-honored tradition in software development, says Mr. Stallman, calling it "hacker humor.") With Mr. Stallman and others building GNU piece by piece, it lacked one vital piece by 1991: the kernel, which makes the operating system run. That is when Linux's namesake came along. Linus Torvalds, then a student at the University of Helsinki, wrote the kernel, named it after himself and made it publicly available under the GNU general public license. (Mr. Torvalds now works for software company Transmeta, a Santa Clara, Calif., start-up whose investors include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.) The GNU general public license s another Stallman brainchild. Written in 1985 and revised twice, most recently in 1991, it permits anyone to use Linux, or GNU/Linux, as the operating system also is known. Licensees must agree to provide the source code to subsequent users, even when they sell the software, as they are permitted to do. And users also must agree to make any additions and improvements to the operating system available to the public in the form of source code. This means that a community of hackers and software developers, linked by the Internet, is constantly adding to and improving Linux. The operating system as it exists today is a loosely defined accretion of repairs and new features. The general public license made that possible. But free software doesn't mean free of charge, and that is where closely held companies like Red Hat and its rival, Caldera Inc., come in. Red Hat, of Research Triangle Park, N.C., takes the latest version of Linux off the Internet and packages it for sale in CD-ROM format. Red Hat's president and co-founder, Robert Young, says the company's customers are paying for three things: the convenience of a CD, technical support and a reliable version of the operating system. He says Red Hat, named for co-founder Marc Ewing's Cornell University lacrosse cap, has shipped about 600,000 CDs since its inception in January 1995. Caldera, of Orem, Utah, has a slightly different business model. It adds proprietary elements to Linux, including a user-friendly desktop, and sells the package on CD-ROM. Caldera doesn't publish the source code for the proprietary elements, some of which it licenses from other vendors. Standing behind Caldera is Ray Noorda, who retired as chairman of Novell Inc. in 1994. Canopy Group, a venture capital firm Mr. Noorda founded in 1995, is Caldera's sole investor, and Caldera was started by former Novell employees who worked under Mr. Noorda. Indeed, Mr. Noorda's embrace of Linux is an extension of his well-documented challenge to Microsoft. Earlier this decade, while under Mr. Noorda's leadership, Novell went on a costly acquisition spree to compete with the Redmond, Wash., software giant, a strategy it has since abandoned. Whether Linux can challenge Windows is an open question. The operating system has an estimated five million to 10.5 million users, according to Red Hat. By contrast, Microsoft will ship an estimated 95 million copies of Windows in 1998. But Linux has had some notable successes. For example, the special-effects shop Digital Domain Inc. used powerful computers running Red Hat's version of Linux to render many of the stunning images from "Titanic," including the icy waters that swallowed the ship. Another user is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. When NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland built a supercomputer out of off-the-shelf PC components, it chose Linux to run the number-crunching machine, partly because of the operating system's culture. "There really is a culture in the Linux community of contributing components," said Donald Becker, a staff scientist at Goddard. "Working with a culture like that makes everyone's job easier." Collective development and troubleshooting make Linux both a nimble and uncommonly stable operating system, proponents say. The drawback, Mr. Becker said, is that Linux is always changing, requiring users to update frequently. "But the alternative, is a stagnant system," he said, "so it's a necessary evil." The free software model, for a long time anathema to most commercial software makers, is gaining currency. Netscape Communications Corp. recently said it will start giving away its Navigator Web browser, as well as the source code that makes it run. And Apache, the free Web server software developed by far-flung hackers, is estimated to run about 45% of the Web pages world-wide, more than any other server software product. [From The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1998, page B7B] -=+=- The Good, Clean Funnies List: Good, clean funnies five times a week, for free! To subscribe or unsubscribe send email with "add" or "remove" in the subject line (without the quotes) to "gcfl-request@usa.net". Send submissions and comments to "gcfl@usa.net". Or go to the web page: http://www.angelfire.com/al/GCFL A cheerful heart is good medicine... Prov 17:22a (NIV) -=+=- The Good, Clean Funnies List: Good, clean funnies five times a week, for free! To subscribe or unsubscribe send email with "add" or "remove" in the subject line (without the quotes) to "gcfl-request@usa.net". Send submissions and comments to "gcfl@usa.net". Or go to the web page: http://www.angelfire.com/al/GCFL A cheerful heart is good medicine... Prov 17:22a (NIV) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199804101825.IAA08226>