True, Unix story is correct.
However,
The dog that wags the tail is applications.
THE LICENSE is what was being referred to as FOSS and the GPL is not just a
story about LINUX. App devs were able to play around with it at home, at work
(without needing to make a budget case to get/buy licenses for it, etc). So, it
was fun stuff too. And, after looking at code, using others code, giving back
code, etc, discovered the power of it. Sometimes, tried it out at work too,
when nothing else fit, they used it (it became trusted).
So, yes, in statement, was referrning to OS, but mostly to the Apps, because,
the OS is worthless without the Apps.
Think LAMP stack, you gotta have the application.
The LICENSE is key.GPL is wonderful, and easy to understand.
Example story -
IBM started using LINUX because of the LAMP stack, the story is, that one day,
out of the blue, when the CEO was thinging about increasing sales... well the
IBM CEO asked staff a question. Noticed they had this web site up and wondered
why they were not selling web sites? The staff checked on it, reported back that
the software that IBM engineers used for that IBM web site was FREE SOFTWARE,
IBM CEO then asked "can we sell it"? They got back to him telling him
that the GPL license says YES you can sell GPL licensed software. So, the IBM
CEO said let's sell it and support the software we are using. A couple of
years later, IBM had about 2 Billion in sales related to Free software. Note -
it was not MS software, and it was interesting to watch as MS could not buy it,
could not Kill it off (due to License), it was totally FREE as in speech, so MS
feared it because they felt that they could not even embrace it due to the
License that might have been viral to have such GPL licensed code mixed in with
their proprietary code (it was perfect).
So, them is the apples.
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