LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : alex@netcraft.com.au
  Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 16:49:13 +1030

Re: compiler missing

Alex,

The origin of the prohibition on the term "X Windows" is the
very original X manual, which on my old SunOS 4.1.3 system still contains:

=============================================================
     The X Consortium requests that the following names  be  used
     when referring to this software:

                                  X
                           X Window System
                             X Version 11
                     X Window System, Version 11
                                 X11
=============================================================

I remember this admonition being in there from the
very earliest distribution tapes (before the days of
QIC cartridges). My O'Reilly book for X, volume 1, says that
version 10, release 4, was released in 1986.
The first "snapshot" released was in September 1987.
Around about the same time, I seem to remember that the GNU tapes
were getting around, and a few years earlier (certainly before 1985),
the TeX tapes were being distributed around the Universities.

Those were 3 early cases of open source.
All 3 of these tapes came with public licence conditions.
So GNU was just one of the 3 main free distributions which
were making a name for open source.
I remember that the X documentation used to stipulate that
the source _shall_ be distributed unchanged in all distributions.

So there were 2 open source movements at MIT at that time,
and there was 1 open source movement at Stanford (namely TeX).
My olde TeX book was first published in 1984, and I bought the
second printing in 1986. But there was an earlier TeX prototype
in earlier years.

In my opinion, Donald Knuth is the original hero of the open source
movement, and he inspired the others. Knuth also did other
bold, original things which were not copied by others -- he said
that TeX shall be bug free (and he paid for anyone reporting
the last 10-20 bugs), and that it shall stay the same
(or nearly the same) forever. I.e. no versionitis.

Richard Stallman used TeX in the early days precisely because
it was open source.

The open source movement was founded by Donald Knuth, and
the mood of the times ensured that others followed, such
as GNU and the MIT X project.

An interesting quote from the O'Reilly volume 1 X book is:

=======================================================
Vendors hope that X will lead to a software explosion similar
to the one that occurred in response to the PC standard
on microcomputers.
=======================================================

I think it was when MS Windows came out after the X Window System
that people started saying "X Windows", and that really grated
with the X developers. And that's why they stipulated that
"X Windows" shall not be uttered.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

==================================
PS.  For anyone who wonders if I succeeded in getting linux to
run on the Toshiba Satellite Pro 480CDT, it does indeed work,
but I had to look at an XF86Config file on the net for
the 430CDT to guess the right mouse/kbd/etc settings.
It looks great with K desktop environment on it.
Or should we say "K windows". Should GNOME be "G Windows".
Hmmm.....
Time for breakfast...

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