Get the latest tech news
Free and Open Source Software–and Other Market Failures
Economists and others focused on money—like my bank—have had a lot of trouble figuring out the free and open source software (FOSS) phenomenon, and eventually they seem to have reached the conclusion that it just makes no sense. So, they go with the flow.
In reality, IBM mainframe customers discovered to their dismay that their expensive 3745 front end was not so much a masterpiece of communication as a carefully engineered bottleneck, which any cheap PC could run circles around. Now that the smoke has finally cleared, none of the old Unix vendors exist anymore, and IBM, as a sad shadow of former glory, has sought commercial asylum for its venerable trademark by buying Red Hat and handing over the steering wheel. About the Authors Poul-Henning Kamp has haunted the Unix world for 40 years and written a lot of widely used open source software, including bits of FreeBSD and the Varnish HTTP Cache.
Or read this on Hacker News
