Comment by pjmlp

1 day ago

The return to 90's style licenses kind of makes the point of everyone realizing someone has to put into the money, capitalism doesn't work with pull requests to upstream.

5 comments

pjmlp

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anthk  19 hours ago

Libre licenses boosted computing like no else. The 90's was mostly about turds in golden cases.

  • musicale  8 hours ago

    90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's law), but as I understand both commercial and free software advanced quite a bit in the 1990s: Visual BASIC, HyperCard 2.0, Java, JavaScript, Linux, MacOS System 7-9, TrueType, Windows 95, Windows NT, Photoshop, Microsoft Office, Encarta, Lotus Notes 2.0, MPEG, QuickTime, video editing (Video Toaster etc.), Pro Tools, MP3 encoders/players and WinAmp, Acrobat and PDF software, WWW, Apache, NCSA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, FrontPage (and other html editors), ICQ and Instant Messenger, video conferencing (CU-SeeMe), various IDEs (Eclipse), etc. Not to mention incredible developments in PC, console and arcade games...

    • anthk  4 hours ago

      Ehhh... I disagree.

      Java -> Bloated compared to Icon/TCL

      VB -> OKish, but TCL/Tk and a bit of C did wonders under Unix.

      NT -> Good, advanced

      95 -> Mediocre against Amiga/Mac.

      MSO -> Polished turd and uberused, giving disasters such as the renaming on Genomics and tons of papers now being void.

      MPEG -> Good, bound to TV and multimedia standards.

      QT -> Propietary crap, but QT3D was and it's still interesting. Lqtplay from libquicktime plays them well.

      MP3 -> Opus and OGG preferred here

      Acrobat/PDF -> PostScript and DJVU

      Netscape/FrontPage -> Damn crazy bloat with opaque formats on tons of stuff not bound to proper terminology. Even using Emacs editing HTML pages seems easier. Composer looked easier than FP, for sure.

      Videoconf -> Yes, h323 and friends.

      IDE's -> A lot of them were better under DOS or very bloated under Windows, such as Eclipse, Netbeans...

      PC/Console -> Yep, 3DFX/Glide and free Unixen, but consoles went downhill, the PC was set ahead since the Unreal engine.

  • pjmlp  6 hours ago

    I disagree, if it was such a great thing for software creators, we wouldn't be seeing everyone going back to similar licenses in spirit.

    Alternatively, placing software behind API paying walls.

    • anthk  11 minutes ago

      >Placing software behind paid API's...

      - Hello, MSN network.

      - Hello, closed memory-dump formats for Microsoft Office.

      - You don't play this niche audio/video format? Install this new adware player, and now you will. Oh, enjoy this new adware toolbar.

      - Shareware/nagware. Enough said.

      - Software patents and codecs. MP3 encoder for streaming? Pay. MPEG encoder/decoder for a custom A/V project? Pay. And so on.