The explosive recent growth of Linux, and the increasing importance
of the Internet, give us good reasons to suppose that the skeptics'
case is wrong. But even supposing the skeptical assessment is true,
Unix culture is worth learning because there are some things that Unix
and its surrounding culture clearly do better than any
competitors.
Open-Source Software
Though the term “open
source”
and the Open Source Definition were not invented until 1998,
peer-review-intensive development of freely shared source code was a key
feature of the Unix culture from its beginnings.
For its first ten years
AT&T's original
Unix, and its primary variant Berkeley Unix, were normally distributed
with source code. This enabled most of the other good things that
follow here.
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