The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

chomwitt · 2025-07-06 02:33:10

For computer science at Bell Laboratories, the period 1968-1969 was somewhat unsettled. The main reason for this was the slow, though clearly inevitable, withdrawal of the Labs from the Multics project.From the point of view of the group that was to be most involved in the beginnings of Unix (K. Thompson, Ritchie, M. D. McIlroy, J. F. Ossanna), the decline and fall of Multics had a directly felt effect. We didn’t want to lose the pleasant niche we occupied, because no similar ones were available; even the time-sharing service that would later be offered under GE’s operating system did not exist.
What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form.We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication.
The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System , Dennis M. Ritchie

RMS:The AI Lab of the 1970s was by all accounts a special place. It was a bit like the Garden of Eden,It hadn’t occurred to us not to cooperate.
The demise of ITS, and the AI Lab hacker community which had sustained it, had been a traumatic blow to Stallman. As a programmer used to working with the best machines and the best software, however, Stallman faced what he could only describe as a “stark moral choice”: either swallow his ethical objection for “proprietary” software – the term Stallman and his fellow hackers used to describe any program that carried copyright terms or an end-user license that restricted copying and modification – or dedicate his life to building an alternate, nonproprietary system of software programs.
RMS:I asked myself: what could I, an operating-system developer, do to improve the situation? It wasn’t until I examined the question for a while that I realized an operating-system developer was exactly what was needed to solve the problem.
Free as in Freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution

Last edited by chomwitt (2025-07-06 02:38:15)

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · 2025-07-06 03:41:19

Don Marti was editor-in-chief at Linux Journal once upon a time and his website is absolutely overflowing with very interesting intriguing thought-provoking stuff!

https://blog.zgp.org/

once on his main webpage find the "Start here" and/or the "About me" sections/sub-headings and have a go!

way down in the "Bonus links" area is a link to a long but must-read commentary regarding the sorry state of search:

https://travellemming.com/perspectives/ftc-letter-google-censors-indie-publishers-with-ai/

Last edited by stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn (2025-07-06 04:07:04)

fanderal · 2025-07-08 20:48:28

@chomwitt
I agree with the intent of your post and have occasionally thought about what was and what is. Comparing them doesn't seem to accomplish much other than a moment's reminiscence that it was good to have lived through and experienced a time and culture when that kind of cooperation existed.

The replacement culture was well under way by 2014 when the tech world verbally attacked Brendan Eich for a relatively minor campaign contribution he'd made 5 years earlier, and forced him to step down at Mozilla. Where was the rest of tech world's support for Eich, for cooperation and for keeping politics out of development?

Yes, there's a need for that cooperation in many fields, and except for small pockets here and there, I very much doubt we'll see it flourish again in our lifetime.

@stargate-scm
Thanks for the link to travellemming. Now I know why Reddit's been showing up in search results more often than it used to.

Lucrative move by Reddit. Wonder what redditers might do when enough of them realize they're a product collectively worth $60M/year. Also wonder if Nate Hake is considering how to organize those "Thousands of Independent Websites Like Mine" and do what Reddit did.

greenjeans · 2025-07-08 21:30:53

^^^Great example fanderal! And to expand on that:

Global marketshare of Firefox web browser:

January 2014 = 14.88%

ten years later...

February 2024 = 2.82%

Source: https://beautifulchart.com/global-brows … 9-to-2024/

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn · 2025-07-09 03:35:03

^^^Re: Global Firefox marketshare

the marketshare loss is mostly due to the continuing increase in smartphone usage which ultimately drives users to the devices default/included browser which is _not_ firefox...sad but true.

anyone here using GrapheneOS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrapheneOS

greenjeans · 2025-07-09 16:35:17

the marketshare loss is mostly due to the continuing increase in smartphone usage which ultimately drives users to the devices default/included browser which is _not_ firefox

I don't believe so, if you look at the chart going back over the years, it shows google Chrome and Safari steadily growing, while FF declines.

tux_99 · 2025-07-09 17:12:06

Well doesn't the iOS browser identify as Safari too? (I have no idea, I don't use Apple stuff)
It makes sense that Chrome and Safari were steadily growing in the last 10-15 years since in the last 10-15 years smartphones (therefore iOS and Android) have had phenomenal growth while PCs not so much.

blackhole · 2025-07-14 07:24:07

fanderal wrote:

The replacement culture was well under way by 2014 when the tech world verbally attacked Brendan Eich for a relatively minor campaign contribution he'd made 5 years earlier, and forced him to step down at Mozilla. Where was the rest of tech world's support for Eich, for cooperation and for keeping politics out of development?

greenjeans wrote:

^^^Great example fanderal! And to expand on that:
Global marketshare of Firefox web browser:
January 2014 = 14.88%
ten years later...
February 2024 = 2.82%

I'm not convinced that the removal of Eich led to Mozilla's downfall, the decline of firefox and the rise of google chrome. It's just a symptom of a larger problem.

When chrome first appeared, it's important to take a few facts into account. At that time, both firefox and IE were still contenders, mobile computing was still in the early phase, and google were funding mozilla, as is still the case. Despite the funding, google employed aggressive marketing in a global campaign and used its growing dominance of the web to engineer firefox out. Coupled with that, key people at Mozilla, steered the project onto the rocks, whilst commanding large salaries and diverting funding away from firefox and onto side projects. So indirectly, google pay them and they in turn move the focus away from the project which is suppisefly being funded.

Last edited by blackhole (2025-07-14 07:28:14)

zapper · 2025-07-14 18:50:39

@blackhole they steered firefox towards the rocks alright... 139 especially is bad.

But why anyone would pick chromium based web browsers over firefox is beyond me.

Firefox based web browsers do exist.

Palemoon is niche for most, but Librewolf, GNU Ice Cat which I would have not suggested in past, but as of a few months ago, I noticed they are keeping close to the ESR releases now. Aka, they aren't lagging nearly as much. Quite the opposite actually!

Mullvad and tor browser are others. Though tor will run into captcha alot.

chomwitt · 2025-07-29 09:18:39

I cant edit my initial post so i add here a link to a video on Unix history where at 3.33 we hear Dennis M. Ritchie again stress the need for an enviroment that encourages communication and the creation of a community. I think it's obvious that Ritchie is reading his words from the paper i quoted at the start.

@UNIX: Making Computers Easier To Use -- AT&T Archives film from 1982,

Anyway digging into timesharing , Multics, DTSS etc one finds that some novel ideas 'attributed' to Unix like the filesystem or even pipes where ideas originated in earlier systems.

So for example in the same video (13.20) Brian W. Kernighan says that the most importand Unix contribution was pipelines . But according to Communication Files: Interprocess IO before Pipes M. Douglas McIlroy:

Communication files significantly antedated Unix pipes.Evidence from design docu-
ments puts the origin of the concept sometime in 1967, between the writing of an outline
of features for the Phase II DTSS system dated March, which doesn’t mention communi-
cation files, and a summary of executive services dated 29 August, which does.

Last edited by chomwitt (2025-07-29 10:06:07)

blackhole · 2025-08-06 08:21:22

@zapper, two important points:

Most people do not make informed choices based on engineering and good design - after having gained an understanding. They make uninformed decisions based on marketing, and have little understanding of the software. Chrome was marketed to the majority of people who know zero about FOSS anyway, and to such people Chrome is "free". To FOSS users and developers, the underlying chromium/blink is "open source", and Mozilla were busy destroying themselves from the inside out, so chromium's ascent, not just as Chrome, but as a new base for most browsers outside of Apple, and many "apps", was assured.

The mozilla corporation and foundation are to blame for this. They're not trying to take back market share / mind share and are focused on the wrong things. They surrendered to chromium, due to who pays the bills. I'm was surprised that firefix didn't rebase on chromium long ago... but then you have to remember this would fuel a true fork, which the paymasters don't want - so leaving the thing on life support and mismanaged by clowns was the best strategy.

Last edited by blackhole (2025-08-06 08:25:59)

Codalunga · 2025-08-06 10:03:39

zapper wrote:

But why anyone would pick chromium based web browsers over firefox is beyond me.

I use Pale Moon as my daily browser and Vivaldi for work, as we rely a lot on Google services (Chat, Classroom, Drive etc.) that, alas, simply work better on Blink and Chromium based browsers.

To remain in topic of cooperation as central motivation, Mozilla's rebrand announcement last year states:

Mozilla isn’t just another tech company — we’re a global crew of activists, technologists and builders, all working to keep the internet free, open and accessible.

Which is great on paper, but it's somehow difficult to take seriously considering how Google is, as a matter of fact, paying the biggest portion of your bills.

zapper · Yesterday 00:22:54

@blackhole Still, librewolf is an option and so is waterfox.

I would take those two firefox current web browser derivatives over any chromium ever. Also Icecat is now being kept up to date so there is that option too.

If people have no choice but to use chromium because stuff don't work in firefox though, that is another thing.

Though 'normal' people I use air quotes cause that feel like an oxymoron to me sometimes but anyways, they always pick the easiest option even if its like surrendering to ads on a silver platter. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to see half of the world put in a mental institution for being so damn stupid.

the more you allow ads, the worse the planet gets and the more data that is collected and the more fascism has power if someone bad gets into power.

I could go on and on, but yeah... suffice to say, the majority of people frustrate me on certain things including this.

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#1 2025-07-06 02:33:10

The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#2 2025-07-06 03:41:19

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#3 2025-07-08 20:48:28

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#4 2025-07-08 21:30:53

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#5 2025-07-09 03:35:03

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#6 2025-07-09 16:35:17

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#7 2025-07-09 17:12:06

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#8 2025-07-14 07:24:07

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#9 2025-07-14 18:50:39

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#10 2025-07-29 09:18:39

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#11 2025-08-06 08:21:22

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#12 2025-08-06 10:03:39

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

#13 Yesterday 00:22:54

Re: The need for cooperation as central motivation in Unix and GNUproject

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