WebReview.com: Open Source and Originality

"Listening to Andy Hertzfeld deliver the keynote at O'Reilly's Open Source conference this month was inspiring. Andy talked about the early days at Apple and creating the Mac user interface, about the hacker ethic and the Open Source/Free Software movement, and about his current work trying to put a friendly face on Linux at Eazel."

"But much as I believe in the virtue of Open Source, the thought did creep in: here's some more imitation."

"I thought: Putting a pretty GUI face on Linux is a worthwhile endeavor, but like most of the work done under the Open Source or Free Software banner, it doesn't look like it will represent a lot of original invention. The projects that launched Free Software and Open Source were royalty-free re-implementations of Unix and the Unix kernel, respectively. Free Software/Open Source is, judging by the projects so far, chiefly about liberating existing software rather than creating something startlingly new."

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