Linux == Open Source but Open Source != Linux

Linux == Open Source but Open Source != Linux

Posted Dec 16, 2004 4:29 UTC (Thu) by jmalcolm (guest, #8876)
Parent article: Porting free software to Windows

I have been an avid Linux user for about a decade now but to be fair there is more to Open Source than Linux.

When Richard Stallman first started writing Free Software he was doing it on a proprietary OS. It is hard to argue that this hurt the Open Source movement. Did writing Open Source software that ran on Solaris hinder the adoption of Linux? Not quite the same--but why not?

If you feel that Windows applications running on a proprietary OS is a bad thing you could always help out the ReactOS people. (http://www.reactos.org) Who knows, maybe ReactOS will be the Open Source OS that the mainstream adopts. Maybe all those Open Source apps on Windows will help.

Although Windows is the clear competitor to beat it is not even the only proprietary alternative. Witness the popularity of Mac OS X with Open Sourcers. GNUStep on Darwin might one day provide an alternative from Apple just like Linux has done for Sun and SCO.

As the article says, it is all about choice and we do not all share the same goals. I bet most of the Inkscape developers are more focussed on providing an alternative to CorelDraw and Illustrator than they are on moving people to Linux. Many will be delighted to bring traffic to the Linux and BSD worlds of course. Somebody somewhere is running it on DragonFly (or at least trying to).

I like having a few Linux distributions to choose from and have switched a few times. I like having more than one operating system to choose from even better. In my heart of hearts I wish there was an Open Source OS/2.

I guess I just hope world domination doesn't result in the same kind of oppression we fought so hard to shrug off.

Anyway, I have to get off my soapbox now and see if I can figure out how to get Xebian onto an XBox. :-)

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