Over the last few days I have become somewhat vexed by the short sighted view that many seem to hold with regard to the internet, the community that inhabits the internet, and the way that community interacts.
A little background may be of use.
Linux is the Bastard Child of Unix, and it will Slay it’s Parent
Once upon a time, not that many years ago, an operating system called Unix ruled the server rooms of academia and business. Unix was the result of a global community pulling together, pooling their knowledge and expertise, leveraging the new network communication methods, and building a network operating system to stand the test of time.
One day a penny finally dropped in a high-up decision maker’s head, and the rather clever idea of making Unix a commercial product was thought up. Cue the instant horror, disbelief and wrath of the many, many developers who helped construct it. Suddenly they were not allowed to share anything. Nobody was allowed to help anybody.
Some of the developers believed so strongly in the ideals behind their participation in the development of the network operating system (yes, I’m principally talking about Richard Stallman) that they set out to re-write the whole damn thing, and keep it free. This became known as “Gnu” - a recursive acronum, standing for “Gnu’s Not Unix”.
The spirit of building things to share, and accepting the help of the community grew faster than anybody had seen before. In the early 1990s a student called Linus Torvalds leant heavily on the Gnu project to produce a desktop Unix system. He called it “Linux”.
Today - following the continued help, involvement, and leverage lended by tens of thousands of developers worldwide, Gnu-Linux has grown into an operating system that could never have been built commercially. It has spawned the Apache webserver, Samba (which reverse engineered the Server Message Block protocol that Microsoft would not share), and many other mission critical services used by more than 80% of internet servers.
If further proof be needed of the strength of the Gnu-Linux platforum, we need only one statement - Google runs on a variant of Gnu-Linux.
Where is this going?
Gnu-Linux succeeded because people shared. People helped each other. Nobody held on to anything. Every decision was up for debate. The entire ethos was one of “can do”, rather than “could do for a price”, or “it’s my football, I’m taking it home”.
Recent days have reminded me that many, many people still exist on the internet - some with significant voices that are heard by many - that do not subscribe to any concept of sharing.
Their insular efforts will eventually fail. The people they inspire have grown up during a different era. An era where the lessons are that communication wins. Relationships win. Helping each other wins. Owning fails. Protecting ownership fails.
I’m anticipating that some will read this post, see through the words and perhaps realise this is targetted at them. Good. If there are feelings of guilt or fear, that is good. It means change may happen. Others will read this post and disassociate themselves from it. You may comfort yourself in the thought that they will not be in your way forever.
Everything changes.