Web without Linux

[Nuke]

From LXF 177, P45, Chris DiBona said "..I don't think the web would exist without open source and Linux"

Much as I am a fan of Open Source and Linux, that is nonsense. One thing I have learned through experience is that nothing and nobody is indespensible. That belief is a similar fallacy to the belief that without Bill Gates there would not be "a computer in every home".

Things would have been different, but the web would still have existed.

[wyliecoyoteuk]

Yes, but it would have belonged to Microsoft and AOL.

Edit: which would mean really, that it would not be the internet, just a series of corporate controlled intranets.

[Nuke]

Yes, but it would have belonged to Microsoft and AOL .... it would not be the internet, just a series of corporate controlled intranets.

It's heading that way anyway, with Twitter, Google, Facbook etc. Some companies bumf now mentions their Facebook presence rather than a website ("Join us on Facebook at blah, blah").

I actually started with text-mode bulletin boards and then Compuserve, an early walled garden of content. Then I discovered the wider internet outside Compuserve, as did others, and Compuserve faded away, seen as parochial and restrictive (everything was indexed and catalogued). Yet now people are returning to that model with Facebook & co in a modified form (or dicovering that model for the first time).

Seems what comes around goes around. This would have happened with/without Linux/Windows (permutate to taste). Bear in mind that Microsoft have only been pushing content (as opposed to selling software) from quite recently.

[nelz]

Without the open standards that the WWW was based on, AOL's proprietary system, which was already growing rapidly, would have most likely have become the dominant system. It's not so much the open source aspect of the WWW that made its successful but the open standards, which meant that anyone could use or provide it, and without extra costs.

[wyliecoyoteuk]

Not really.
Facebook is a replacement for AOL, Compuserve et al, it is not the internet, nor is likely to ever be.
IRC, MSN etc are disappearing, but they were never the largest part of the internet anyway.
The internet is diverse, and different people choose different ways to interact with it.
Many people these days only touch the internet through Facebook, twitter and Google, but many do not.

And bear in mind that a huge share of the internet infrastructure runs on open-source software, which has no licensing costs.

[ajgreeny]

Not really.
Facebook is a replacement for AOL, Compuserve et al, it is not the internet, nor is likely to ever be.
IRC, MSN etc are disappearing, but they were never the largest part of the internet anyway.
The internet is diverse, and different people choose different ways to interact with it.
Many people these days only touch the internet through Facebook, twitter and Google, but many do not.

And bear in mind that a huge share of the internet infrastructure runs on open-source software, which has no licensing costs.

Absolutely true!

I do not use facebook, twitter or any other social-media site because that is not why I use the internet. I do use google for searches but I am never logged in when I do so, and I seldom use the webmail gmail site but still use thunderbird instead.

Perhaps I am old-fashioned and/or paranoid, but I thoroughly dislike having to login with username and password to every site that I use, with a few exceptions like this forum, of course.