where would technological progress be today without the rise of Free Software?
what wouldn't exist today if we were still stuck in the proprietary "dark ages"?
>>53696269
No OS X, no rise of Apple, no iPhone, no iPad. And that's just for starters.
>>53696323
good to know. RMS is now on the "people to kill while time traveling" list. Right before Hitler.
>>53696393
the invention of the iphone has arguably redefined almost the entire industry for the better:
- due to low resources and battery power, devs now producing more optimized code, which cross-pollinates the PC ecosystem with computers from 10 years ago still being usable and relevant
- capacitive multi-touch touchscreens making UIs more natural to use, paving the way for things like the iPad that nobody else could get right before
- limited storage leading to a boom in cloud services
- yearly refreshes leading to an accelerating arms race in new and better technologies as well as improved fabrication processes
i'm sure there's more.
>>53696269
No internet as we know it, Berkeley sockets and all that
No "blogosphere" with apache gone
No java dominance with sun never releasing the tools which means no Twitter, no Netflix
No Facebook or WordPress or drupal
Microsoft would own the internet server infrastructure since they are honestly better at it than IBM, oracle, or HP
No Android, no Nokia super phones
No Amazon market or cloud so no Dropbox
No SSH, scp, sftp, SSL, Firefox, chrome, safari
No virtual desktops
No wifi routers, smart(sic) TVs, fewer washing machines
No Macs as another anon said, thus no 4chan
No decent font rendering
No uefi
MATLAB wouldn't exist
No decent audio or video formats
Vlc wouldn't exist, nor would any other competitors to wmp or QuickTime or real player
Star office might still be a thing
3d printing would have taken an extra 4-5 decades
...I'm running out of space. Basically free software rules the world and anybody who denies that is woefully ignorant
>>53696537
Smarthphones led to the development of comparable yet practically free computers that are now used by the majority of the world's population. Without smarthphones computers would probably still be relegated to the upper 20% of the global socioeconomic scale.
>>53696612
>>53696537
>implying shareware wouldn't have filled the void
>>53696713
Shareware had neither the quality or the contributors that allowed individuals to operate competitively with corporations, and it never would have without becoming free software.
>>53696738
yes it did.
>>53696269
Is that mt Fuji?
>>53697228
If shareware were a viable competitor, then where is it today?
Utorrent? WinZip? Kazaa?
Where's the infrastructure shareware?
Where's the consumer tech shareware? Where are my shareware-running TVs and refrigerators and phones?
Shareware today only exists as an extension to proprietary software or hardware, not in competition with it. Free software can exist and compete directly with proprietary software, and it can enable proprietary hardware like never before.
>>53697353
>If shareware were a viable competitor, then where is it today?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202023
>>53697487
So as extension to proprietary software, competing for scraps and giving 30% of any money it makes to Apple, floundering in a locked ecosystem for someone else's advertising purposes.
Got it.
>>53697618
and still turning more of a profit than most free software developers do
>>53696612
4chan has nothing to do with Macs.
>>53697702
I hope you continue believing that. I can see it working well for you in the future
>>53696269
I always wondered where science would be nowadays without Free Software. I'm a physicist and have worked in experimental and theoretical particle physics, then went on to some engineering-heavy discipline, to finally end up in atmospheric science. GNU/Linux was always around. GNUplot, the compiler suite, bash, .. I would call it the backbone of a lot of research groups. You might argue that a few couple of grand of license costs might not matter in the grand scheme of things (universities tend to have the cash lying around to buy software), but you never know.
Fact is that the GNU tools are ever-present in research. Since they are available to everyone makes collaboration easier as well.
Fuck IDL.
>>53698355
just goes to show how technologically retarded /g/ really is when the majority of the posters actually believed an ancient troll post
>>53699106
Believing and repeating for humorous effect are different. 4chan wouldn't exist because none of the technology that it runs on would exist, including ssl, cloud infrastructure, php, linux, etc.
>>53699520
the implications of
>no macs no 4chan
was referring to the hardware this site runs on and not to open internet technologies that made the software end possible
>>53699106
>>53696323
No mac mini. No 4chan.
>>53699590
i've got news for you
>>53696323
apple would've just been acquired by microsoft and OS X would have been NT-based. same for the iphone etc.
