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University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)

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Re: University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)

#31

Post by pasc1878 »

mumblemumble wrote: post #26

> Remember when UNIX was given away free? > How many of you are using UNIX now? It is licensed. Fast forward 30 years... or 20. Ten, for that matter.

Pedantically this is correct still.

You are not using UNIX unless you paid for a mac or iPhone (or higher cost machines like IBM AIX et.)

Linux is not a UNIX - it is not certified. Noone has paid for it to be certified.

Re: University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)

#32

Post by msla »

mumblemumble wrote: post #26

> Remember when UNIX was given away free? > How many of you are using UNIX now? It is licensed. Fast forward 30 years... or 20. Ten, for that matter.

And the Unix variants people use (the Open Source BSDs, most Linux distros) are indeed legally not Unix, just imitations. And they helped kill Officially Licensed Unix mostly dead. Not just through price competition, but through adaptability and stability you don't get when the software is a Product owned by a Company with Executives who get Big Ideas and Grand Synergies. Usually, the most the official maintainers can do is tell you that you're on your own with your weirdo patches they'll never merge, but that's a lot better than a proprietary company saying it will never happen in this life or the next. Ownership can be death, as people don't like living under a sword of Damocles where someone else can unilaterally end what they're doing.

Re: University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)

#33

Post by mananaysiempre »

snvzz wrote: post #21

Kermit was similarly hindered by its licensing. It is an open protocol with open source implementations now. Just a bit too late.

The plain-language explanations in the book[1] are still awesome, though. The exposition is fairly faithful to reality and doesn’t really omit any details. A style from a different time that doesn’t seem to have survived in today’s popular writing—which has its own good traits, but not these.

[1] http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/_Digital_Press/daCruz_Ke...

Re: University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)

#34

Post by snvzz »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #33
snvzz wrote: post #21

Kermit was similarly hindered by its licensing. It is an open protocol with open source implementations now. Just a bit too late.

The plain-language explanations in the book[1] are still awesome, though. The exposition is fairly faithful to reality and doesn’t really omit any details. A style from a different time that doesn’t seem to have survived in today’s popular writing—which has its own good traits, but not these. [1] http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/_Books/_Digital_Press/daCruz_Ke...

Agree.

If you like this kind of text, you might enjoy "C Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications" by Joe Campbell.

Re: University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)

#35

Post by mumblemumble »

pasc1878 wrote: post #31
mumblemumble wrote: post #26

> Remember when UNIX was given away free? > How many of you are using UNIX now? It is licensed. Fast forward 30 years... or 20. Ten, for that matter.

Pedantically this is correct still. You are not using UNIX unless you paid for a mac or iPhone (or higher cost machines like IBM AIX et.) Linux is not a UNIX - it is not certified. Noone has paid for it to be certified.

That's kind of exactly what I'm getting at. Officially licensed Unix is all but dead. It was outcompeted by freer (choose your own capitalization, either works) POSIX operating systems.

Re: University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)

#36

Post by kragen »

MongoTheMad wrote: post #27
kragen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in 01993 only organizations had internet connections i mean in some places you could get a dialup slip connection from something like netcom, but you would put the files you wanted to share on netcom's ftp server, not your own

This is simply not true. My grandpa was an early adopter in '92 and had an internet connection to his home in Little Falls, MN.

you're right, what i said was actually false, because there were a number of individual people who had their own internet connections. i've met some of them since then. but we're talking about maybe a thousand people out of the millions on the internet. i didn't know any of them in 01993. literally everyone i knew on the internet got their internet access by belonging to an organization that had internet access

Re: University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy (1993)

#37

Post by shiroiuma »

ska wrote: post #9
meepmorp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, there were hosts on the internet that let you browse their entire filesystem via ftp. This was in the days before shadow password files were a thing, too. I'm too upstanding of a citizen to have done so, but a friend of a friend once spent a couple weeks of computer time running crack on those things and managed to gain shell access to some of the machines.

If you had such a ftp service, there was a good chance that eventually you'd end up unwittingly serving porn out of a twisted little maze of nested directories with embedded special characters an the like. This killed a fair few useful-but-not-important sites.

Not just porn, but also warez (pirated software). In fact, I'd say warez was much more common than porn, though that might be because of observer bias...
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