I find the history of UNIX to be an interesting subject to me, because it’s history plainly lays the track for exactly why it is the way it is today in combination with Linux, FreeBSD, Darwin, and any other flavors.

I think Dave McIlroy sums up the open source initiative best in this quote from the Bell Labs site’s rundown of UNIX history:

“Thompson saw that file arguments weren’t going to fit with this scheme of things and he went in and changed all those programs in the same night. I don’t know how…and the next morning we had this orgy of one-liners.”

This profound statement brings to light exactly the mantra that I have seen at work in the Open Source Community, as follows:

  1. A user needs something.
  2. A developer builds something.
  3. Everyone is happy.

In my opinion, this single sense of community is what make Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) well worth it in an every day setting.

I’ve seen countless times when I wanted to use something, found out there was a bug, and left it alone for a couple days, only to come back to it and find out that someone had written a patch and now the app I want works. It fills me with an amazing sense of being a part of something much bigger than myself (even though I didn’t make the patch).

I have been a Linux user for several years, and for just over a year, have used Linux almost exclusively. I find it simpler for the plain fact that there is more that I can do with it than I can with other operating systems. On my laptop, I have a non-routeable IP configured on which I run an Apache web server to host development sites, which I can access locally without a network connection. I run VMware, in which I have several machines running at any given time for testing purposes or compatibility tests. I can manage my iPod, and watch DVDs I have multiple desktops arranged in a 3-dimensional cube on which at any given time I might have 30+ applications running.

The most beautiful piece of the pie is that all of the software I run is free and open source, which allows me the freedom to not only use the application, but view the source, and change what I think may need improvement. Either way, when I am on my computer I am never at a loss for something to intrigue me.

I implore anyone with an interest in an alternative and a willingness to learn something new to give Linux a try.

/cs