“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.”