New York Times: Making Programs Like Water: Free and Transparent
Jun 14, 2001, 21:44 (5 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Katie Hafner)
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Tim O'Reilly is interviewed by the NYT here, generally about
Free Software, tangentially about Linux:
NYT: Why do you think Linux took off
the way it did?
O'Reilly: In a funny way, I'm not sure Linux
did take off the way people thought it did! One of the things I've
been disappointed by over the last few years is that so much of the
focus around open source has been on Linux. It's a great operating
system, but it blinds people to other programs that may be even
more important. I've firmly believed for years that the key thing
to watch is the role of open-source software in building an
emergent next-generation Internet operating system. There's this
great passage in the book of Jeremiah, where he says, "Oh, earth,
earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord." He starts preaching to
the ground because no one else will listen. I've been saying to
open source people for years: "It's the Internet! It's the
Internet!"
As a result, I've always considered Apache to be probably the
single, most important open source project, but I've also been
fascinated by the role of Perl, the computer language they call
"the duct tape of the Internet."
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