I mean, civilization seeks a separate path as that offered by FOSS.. The overwhelming majority of any information regarded as a starting point for computers points to proprietary products and not to products offered as FOSS.

I mean, when people 500 years from today are reading about Linux, how will the "group of people that used Linux" be described?

Will they even know of its existence?

An opinion topic.


Assuming that growth is positive, it will be a footnote on how things were at one time.

Assuming we don't screw ourselves before then.

How will FOSS be remembered? What makes you think it will ever disappear? All it takes is one programmer willing to make his program's code available free of charge, etc. "FOSS" does not need Linux to exist.

Not all things live forever, my friend.

I'm saying, of those things which will, hypothetically, cease to exist..

What, in the event thereof, will their description in future references be?

^+1

We're not talking about a species of living creatures that at some point go irrevocably extinct. If in 2500 no FOSS projects are "alive" all it takes is for one programmer to get out of bed one morning and -write- a piece of FOSS. Naturally, one could argue that by 2500 programmers/software/computers might not exist and thus FOSS could simply no longer be created. True, however, by 2500 humans/earth/etc. might not exist and thus there would be no-one to do any remembering in the first place.

I don't even know what kind of answers you are looking for. People can't properly predict the date of the next Slackware release or if it's going to rain today/tomorrow.

Hopefully it won't have to be remembered, hopefully it will be the norm at that time.

Around 20-25 years ago when this stuff originally kicked off, practically everyone used to write their own programs and pass them around to their friends. Program listings were printed in the back of computer hobbyist magazines for the readers to learn from and to type in and run for themselves. Most people today aren't even aware of that recent history, and that was only 25 years ago!

In 500 years time? "Planet of the Users"
"Google TV" anyone?

Well, Linux 'kicked off' around 20 years ago, UNIX had been created almost 20 years before Linux, and was initially FOSS [even though this wasn't necesserarly what AT&T wanted at the time].

500 years from now: Google has what plants crave.

I was thinking more along the lines of, "two centuries ago, in about 2000AD, almost everyone had a computer, and almost every one of those computers ran this lame operating system that was responsible for both of the nuclear wars we've had in the last 5 years (by way of funding the individual who donated 33trillion dollars to the Nukes-For-The-People-Who-Paid-For-Them project.) There was also one called Linux, which was only a good thing."

By John Connor Jr.Jr.Jr.Jr.
Published: June 4, 2210

"Two centuries ago, some idiot came up with the idea to give an Operating System called Linux real working artificial intelligence. Too bad that that the kernel had become too secure to be hacked and turned off, especially with the AI modules loaded."

Yes, but...

20-25 years ago, computers were not general consumer items. They were bought by businesses, people who were interested in computers, and fledgling gamers. Thus, the computer magazines of the time catered for them.

It is my bet that there are a far greater number of people who use their computers for coding these days, than there were in 1985. It's just that they're a smaller proportion of the totality of users, because computers these days can do so many things that are of interest to people who aren't actually interested in computers. One effect of this is that there are many more IT magazines, but many of these are aimed purely at the end user.

As for how FOSS will be remembered in history: just as today, FOSS will be powering the machines on which that history is recorded.

<* yawn *>

Um, 20-25 years ago was 1985-1990. Those of us older than dirt can remember that yes, computers were general consumer items in those days. Pricey (and at night the light from the screen attracted dinosaurs), but readily available. Heck, by 1990 I was on my second PC (an IBM PS/2 running a spiffy 286, a nice upgrade from the 8086 based Televideo).

I didn't mean they weren't widely available. What I meant, as I said, was that in those days computers were mainly owned by businesses, gamers and people interested in computers.

How many peoples' grannies* would have had a computer in those days? Used not for tinkering or playing X-Wing, or signing in to IRC and usenet over a dial-up modem, but for keeping in touch with the grandkids in Australia, organising digital photos and writing letters to the council?

The World Wide Web was not introduced until 1991, the first usable version of Windows was introduced in 1992, Linux didn't have a GUI until 1994, and a Mac was about $2,500. Computing meant the command line, and while the *nix command line is a very powerful way of interacting with your machine, it is not very consumer-friendly.

* I apologise for this outrageously stereotyped view of grannies.