Nummer 99-1, 27 jan. 1999
1. Inleiding
De tijd dringt en vanavond moet er nog een klein krantje uit voor de bijeenkomst van as. vrijdag..
Daar gaat ie dan:
Eerst nog maar even de beste wensen voor jullie allen, voor zover nog niet gedaan. Het laatste jaar voor de eeuw-wisseling waarbij het kaf en het koren zullen worden gescheiden, en de goede klok- en cmos- software zich zal manifesteren. Misschien een aardige proef om van alle PC's en Mac's eens op de club na te gaan wie er zonder kleerscheuren de 21ste eeuw haalt. Of zouden de addertjes onder het gras toch in de software en niet in het systeem zitten? Vast staat in elk geval dat we nu allemaal wel in een 2000 werkgroepje zitten en dat men zich suf test . Wie nog een Check Uit Pro 98 wil zegt het maar...
Verder uiteraard deze maal, heel kort, een verslag van de 4 weken in de VS, die ik gedeeltelijk bij mijn dochter maar vooral onderweg heb door gebracht. Een auto stond klaar dus wat wil je nog meer. Een credit credit-credit-card lijkt geduldig en het was meestal mooi weer: zo'n 20-25 graden. Behalve een witte kerst met skiën en 1 dag regen, leek het wel een zomer vakantie. Naast de grote steden, de nationale parken en de woestijn was er aan het eind van het jaar geen vuurwerk> Als je dat daar doet wordt je voor je .. geschoten en gaat de lont u uit......
Tenslotte, op de valreep naar het Moscone Centre in San Francisco waar de gehele Mac bevolking van de US ( en enkele Euro-pianen ) zich zeer konden vermaken met de 5 zuurtjes kleuren van de nieuwe iMacs
266 en de in Plastic wit/blauw gehulde nieuwe super G3 Mac renpaarden. Bus 100, klok tot 400, standaard 16 MB video ram, 2 usb en ook nu 2 firewire. Ik leg dit vrijdag wel verder uit en heb ook plaatjes.
Blijkbaar gaat het goed met Apple en hebben zeer veel fabrikanten een ontwikkelaars er weer zin in.
Ik was er maar 1 dag maar heb veel leuks gezien en een tas met folders en gratis CD's.
Genoeg hierover want we leven in een wereld met Intel/AMD Hardware en Microsoft Software. De vraag is of dat zo blijft want er zijn tekenen dat de hegemonie van Gates III c.s. wel eens kan verminderen op bepaalde terreinen. Vooral grote bedrijven kijken steeds vaker naar Linux op Intel systemen en laten WinNT voor bv. hun intern Intranet systeem op Linux draaien. Lekker stabiel zeggen ze. Ook wat van de oude paarden als WordPerfect en ook Netscape hebben hiervoor zeer goed bruikbare versies, die op vele platforms draaien. Misschien komt er toch weer wat vertier in de tent als er wat spelde-prikken worden uitgedeeld. Ook bij de Mac is er "Be" als vol multi-tasking systeem met protected memory bloedsnel is en een Intel versie zal er nu ook wel zijn...
Nu over tot de orde van de dag: De volgende avonden zijn op 26/2 en 26/3 en dan is er weer een krantje. Dit voorjaar geen excursie maar pas weer in de volgende eeuw. Verder houden we alles bij het oude en bereiden we ons voor op de volgende HCC ( al is dat voorlopig op de zolder in Boskoop). Wel ontvang ik telefoontjes van lieden, die op de HCC langskwamen en woonachtig in de regio, toch langs willen komen. Ook zullen we de primafoon op bezoek krijgen ..
En uiteraard de contributie: we houden het nog een jaartje op 65 gulden maar teren dan wel in! Misschien moet de koffie tot 1 bakkie worden beperkt. Ook de huur gaat wat omhoog en de ontvangst van vol
betalende leden neemt wat af. Gireer mij snel de 65 piek naar het nummer dat bovenaan dit blad staat.
Ik kom deze maal, wegens een grote achterstand in Leiden en veel onderwijs taken, niet aan een goede notulering toe. Peter wordt node gemist ..
Ik vul dat blad verder met een stukje over Linux en de aankondiging voor vrijdag as.
2. Linux als alternatief voor Win NT of MacOS?
The grass-roots 'open source' software movement is no longer just a hacker cult. It could end up challenging mighty Microsoft.
BY STEVEN LEVY for Newsweek
THE OWNER OF THE SUDDENLY tiny Cyber Loft cafe stopped counting at 70 people. "It's never been this crowded before," he said of the pasty-skinned mass of keyboard-clicking humanity flat braved bitter temperatures to attend last Wednesday night's meeting of The Philadelphia Linux Users Group. The attraction was Eric Raymond, a flannel-shirted 40-year-old programmer who has emerged as The principal philosopher of the "open source" movement, The hottest fling gong in software today‹and perhaps The biggest threat to Microsoft that's not on the government payroll.
Raymond's 1997 Web manifesto, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," made the case Flat open-source software‹programs independently created and freely circulated by hackers for their own pleasure and the common good‹can compete with, and even beat, tile revenue machines in Redmond, Wash., and Silicon Valley. The prime contender is Linux, an operating system created in 1991 by a Finnish student, and now used by an estimated 10 million people, not all of whom sport pocket protectors. Linux wins accolades for its versatility and its stability, but generates passion by its ideology: a no-cost distribution model and accessible "source code" (the arcane computer language that tells computers what to do). Raymond knows this, and charms the crowd with a two-hour talk, comparing the movement to the "gift economy" of Kalahari tribesmen m Africa. One listener pipes up that Linux might work for his company, and the crowd erupts. "You've seen the Source and it's good!" someone shouts. "Free the Source!" yells another. Inevitably, a third person calls out, "Use the Source, Luke!"
To a surprising extent, people are already using it‹and have been for years. Free software, with an explicit Invitation to tinker with and improve its openly circulated source code was the rule in the early days of computing, before Bill Gates figured out how to make megabucks from the proprietary alternative‹regarding code as the crown jewels, and calling unauthorized users thieves. Then came the Internet, built on open standards and an infrastructure owned by no one. Unasked, people created open
source programs like Sendmail, the dominant means of sending messages on the Net. In addition, the leading software used in Web-site servers is Apache, a free system where development is guided by a board of wizards apparently motivated more by altruism than a need for a warehouse full of Porsches. And last year Netscape created an open-source browser. "When people ask me whether open source is credible," says publisher and software maker Tim O'Reilly, "I ask, 'Do you believe m the Internet?' "
The current wave of source-oids embrace the idea of a sharing community, but also believe their software
building model is practical, and in many cases superior. Eric Raymond explains in his essay that companies like Microsoft are like painstakingly slow cathedral builders, while open-sourcers emulate she model of unfettered bazaars. Not only do ideas flourish there, but the teeming population, despite the apparent street chaos, self-organizes to provide people the goods they want. When it comes to fixing software bugs, the cathedral model fails‹too few people are granted knowledge of the way the entire program is coded, so they can't figure out the more subtle flaws. (Maybe that's why the new versions of Windows are always way late.) In the bazaar, however, "bugs turn shallow pretty quick when exposed to a thousand eager co
developers pounding on every release." Open source's poster child is Linux (rhymes with cynics). It's the kernel (the central component) of an operating system, the big enchilada of programming. Its creator was Linus Torvalds then a 21-year-old student at the University of Helsinki, who simply wanted something on his home computer that worked like the complicated UNIX system at his school. Still living with his parents, he hacked a version he wanted to show to friends. He posted it on the Internet. In a year, his user base grew from five to a hundred. He never considered charging for it, never thought of keeping the code secret. People started e-mailing him comments, and then, unsolicited, sent him software patches with corrections and new features. Eventually, Torvalds became captain of a growing team of unpaid developers that he now estimates at more than a thousand strong. He allows companies like Red Hat and Caldera to sell copies of the software (to those without the patience or know-how to download and install it for free), as long as they don't restrict users from copying it or tinkering with it.
Torvalds says that if he were to drop off the face of the earth, Linux development would continue. In a sense the community owns it. Linux advocates celebrate this: "There's no company to screw it up," says Sam Ockman, 24-year-old head of Pengum Computers (named after Tux, Linux's official mascot). Software companies that do sell or support Linux can contribute to new versions while leaving the decisions about what finally goes in to the high holy Lasters (Torvalds and his trusted lieutenants) who make those judgments‹based on technical criteria, not marketing ones. While nay-sayers like analyst Merv Adrian of the Giga Group contend Linux is still "a cult product," Torvalds wryly notes that his nerdy little system has grown pretty impressively for a hard-to-use product with few popular applications. "It has scaled from one person to millions," he says. "If it scales just a few more orders of magnitude it will be on every person's desktop in the world."
Privately, Microsoft is fretting about this. In an internal memo company engineer Vmod Valloppil]il warned that Linux and open source "poses a direct, short-term revenue threat to Microsoft." In the long rum he worried, the open-source model's "free exchange of ideas" could hurt the Redmondites even more. Publicly, though, Microsoft scoffs at the very idea of people writing software and neglecting to cash in on it. Vice president Ed Muth compares the Linux crowd to the merry men of Robin Hood‹ appealing rogues, perhaps, but not the sort you'd hire to baby-sit. "No one was depending on Robin Hood to make the trains rim on time, or provide automated transactions at their bank," he says.
But thousands of people are depending on Linux to perform critical tasks‹and generally claiming that they find that it doesn't crash as often as Windows NT, Microsoft's industrial strength operating system. Linux helps make the trains r m on time at places like NASA Southwestern Bell and Boeing. The numbers, can only increase as
companies write versions of their software that run on the system, expanding the Linux's range from corporate uses like servers to end user tasks. Derek Burney, a VP at Corel, says his company will release the tools they've created to convert applications like WordPerfect to Linux: "That's why we're confident that m a year's time virtually any Windows application could conceivably be running on Linux." This process will not only view new converts but allow Linux enthusiasts m the corporate world to spread the Source throughout their workplaces. "When we announced our intention to deliver all our products on Linux, people suddenly were pointing to the Linux disks they had hidden under their desks," says Mark Jarvis, a vp at database king Oracle.
Will this mark the passage of Linux from a geek delight to a tool of the common used? Will open source prevail and become, as Tim O'Reilly predicts: **the next wave of software?
Larry Augustin certainly thinks so. As a Stanford grad student in 1991, he stumbled across Linux. Impressed with its speed and economy, he began installing systems for friends, so much so that he abandoned his collaboration with two friends on an Internet start-up. Now he heads his own firm, VA Research, which builds Linux-powered workstations, and he doesn't regret leaving his buddies. "Our amp has been slower," he says, "but I'm sure we'll pass them."
The name of the Internet start-up Augustin left? Yahoo, currently valued at around $34 billion. He must really believe that the Source is with him.
With BRAD STONE and DEBORAH BRANSCUM in Silicon Valley and ARLYN TOBIAS GAJILAN
3. En tenslotte:
Hoop ik jullie, onder welk besturings-systeem dan ook, in groten getale gezond en wel te ontmoeten op:
vrijdag 29 januari 1999
aan de Keenenburgweg 9 in Schipluiden
in het Dorpshuis
tussen 20 en 23.30 uur.
Brengt een systeem en/of een introducé(e) mee. Stel je computer problemen en ervaringen aan de orde bij de grote ronde.
Wij zorgen voor een Internet-verbinding en een gemengd netwerk met PC's en Mac's onder de hoede van GerardS. en Peter vH.
Gegroet, KEES