[geeks] [rescue] Ultra 5 OS

[Lionel Peterson]

On Apr 29, 2010, at 11:02 AM, Andrew Jones <andrew at jones.ec> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 09:58:15AM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> On Apr 28, 2010, at 4:41 PM, Andrew Jones <andrew at jones.ec> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm still pretty sure Cygnus was the first firm to try to make Free
>>> software
>>> the core of its business model
>>
>> Cygnus did what UniPress did, take someone else's code and modify/
>> support it, right? For example, Cygnus sold supported GNU software,
>> not their own, right? They didn't write new, unique programs
>> independent of other works and then offer them freely, did they?  
>> Their
>> work-products were not free (as in beer), were they?
>>
>> Also, when tossing around the word 'free' in this context, please
>> specify 'as in beer', 'as in speech', or both...
>>
>> I assume you mean 'both'.
>
> I meant free-as-in-beard.  Free with a capital 'F.'
>
> Yes, Cygnus sold support for GNU, but GNU software *was* Cygnus's  
> software.
> They aggressively hacked on GCC, and they wrote much of the code in  
> today's
> binutils.  Working on GNU software was their raison d'etre.

In 1989, at least five years after UniPress had a successful business  
model selling a supported version of GNU emacs, and I assume they fed  
back some improvements/fixes to public domain/GNU.

I don't mean to come across as a cheerleader for UniPress, but they  
are the example I am most familiar with. I know there were others, but  
UniPress was the first I am aware of, and, IIRC, were very polarizing  
at the time (viewed as profiting on the work of others, ignoring/ 
discounting effort to port and maintain across a half-dozen to a dozen  
platforms/environments)...

Lionel