On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>
> > This got me thinking. I can make a really good argument (at some point,
> > not now, no time) that e-mail could never have gotten as big (universal,
> > nearly ubiquitous, one common standard) as it did without the modern
> > (1990+) Internet,
>
> Abolutely agree.
>
>
> > which could not have gotten where it is today with
> > Linux.
> >
>
> Absolutely disagree :-) I have no holy axes to grind, but linux
> came along too late to affect much of the pre CO/RE (1994 or so,
> commercial/research) split foundational work (where the little
> unixes thrived) and too small in numbers to have set conventional
> standards since then.
Allow me to explain my premise.
What Linux did was allow any nerd to now have their own unix box. The
next step was then to be able to take advantage of this crazy cool thing
called the Internet. Primarily, the killer-app was Usenet and e-mail, but
of course for nerds there was other wondrous stuff online. So now these
nerds started seeking out ways that they could connect to the internet.
The ease of having your own unix box drove that. Now, some of these nerds
realized if they added an extra phone line they could give friends access
to the internet through their box. Some realized they could SELL internet
access to other people. In fact, I was an investor in a pretty early ISP
in the Sacramento area that was started by a very young friend of mine,
and is still thriving today. This begat the Mom&Pop ISP boom. Pretty
soon, big companies like the Bells, Sprint, MCI, etc. started to take
notice that people were making money selling access to the Internet.
Within a couple years (1995ish) they started to jump on the bandwagon.
Then began a huge influx of new users to this thing called e-mail and the
internet and, very soon after that, the World Wide Web, that only a couple
years before didn't even know this thing existed. The rest is history.
My contention, and again, I can make a good argument (much better than
this) if I had more time, but if Linux had not come around, the adoption
of the internet by the public at large would have been a lot longer in
coming. Linux was the lubrication that enabled quick penetration of
internet into the mainstream.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Wed Jan 12 2005 - 21:24:12 GMT