Unix behind Open Source: What is the Big Deal? What is the Catch?
This is part of the educational quest to finish Pluralsight’s UNIX and UNIX Systems: The Big Picture. See how my quest is going at EDUCATIONAL QUEST: UNIX and UNIX Systems: The Big Picture
The aim of this pageđź“ť is to argue that the greatest legacy of UNIX is, perhaps surprisingly, an unintended consequence of being the root of open source movement.
- UNIX itself was commercial product — it is the progeny, its children like Linux + Free/OpenBSD that made its features freely available and sparkled the open-source revolution (summarized wonderfully in The History of Computing: An Abridged History of Free And Open Source Software)
WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL?
- big_deal#1 of open is that you are able to experiment with 100 iterations of a project before having to settle on the perfect combination of resources
- big_deal#2 of open is the ability to create a sophisticated, multi-tier infra deploy without having to re-invent the wheel for every little detail
- → instead, rely on the shared work of other devs for secondary components and if you choose, contribute to the common goods
- → all have benefits: both businesses and private folks
WHAT IS THE CATCH?
- Stressed in “Open Source” is Broken — Xe responding to the massive log4j vulnerability from the end of 2022
As of yesterday, there were a grand total of three sponsors for this person’s work. THREE. As of today, this number is now 14; however this is no excuse. This person should be funded in a level that is appropriate for how critical log4j2 is used in the ecosystem. There is no excuse for this. This person’s spare time passion project is responsible for half of the internet working the way it should. Vulnerable companies to this issue included Apple, Google, my cell phone carrier and basically everyone that uses JavaEE in its default configuration.
