The reality of open source is that it in fact predates commercial software, when computers became available around 1945 the primary mode of software development was extremely collaborative. People learned how to program working for computer manufacturers who didn’t see any benefit to the commercialization of the software. Why is it that today the commercial software industry dominates a landscape where open source software is equally capable?
Recently following an unrelated upgrade to my VirtualBox client, one of my host VM’s started exhibiting unusual behavior. While it was possible to retrieve directory listings from a UNC path, any attempt to map a drive would result in a standard although somewhat generic error message. (more…)
The ubiquity of the FAT32 file system has allowed the common USB flash drive to pervade virtually every desktop computer. My flash drive can easily be used on a Windows, Mac or Linux workstation. Even more importantly, I can copy a handful of photos to it and at my local Target store the Kodak photo machine is able to read the images from the drive.
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