3.
Killer apps don’t have to be proprietary. Witness, of course, the legendary Mosaic browser, a program whose copyright permits noncommercial derivatives with certain restrictions. Still, I think the reader gets the point: the software marketplace is like the lottery. The bigger the potential payoff, the more people want to participate. For a good summary of the killer-app phenomenon, see Philip Ben-David, “Whatever Happened to the `Killer App’?”
4.
See Craig Mundie, “The Commercial Software Model”, senior vice president, Microsoft Corp. Excerpted from an online transcript of Mundie’s May 3, 2001, speech to the New York University Stern School of Business.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp
5.
The acronym GNU stands for “GNU’s not Unix”. In another portion of the May 29, 2001, NYU speech, Stallman summed up the acronym’s origin:
We hackers always look for a funny or naughty name for a program, because naming a program is half the fun of writing the program. We also had a tradition of recursive acronyms, to say that the program that you’re writing is similar to some existing program . . . I looked for a recursive acronym for Something Is Not UNIX. And I tried all 26 letters and discovered that none of them was a word. I decided to make it a contraction. That way I could have a three-letter acronym, for Something’s Not UNIX. And I tried letters, and I came across the word “GNU”. That was it.
Although a fan of puns, Stallman recommends that software users pronounce the “g” at the beginning of the acronym (i.e., “gah-new”). Not only does this avoid confusion with the word “gnu”, the name of the African antelope,
Source: author notes and online transcript of “Free Software: Freedom and Cooperation”, Richard Stallman’s May 29, 2001, speech at New York University.
Chapter 3 notes
1.
See Michael Gross, “Richard Stallman: High School Misfit, Symbol of Free Software, MacArthur-certified Genius” (1999). This interview is one of the most candid Stallman interviews on the record. I recommend it highly.
2.
See Judy Steed,
His vision of free software and social cooperation stands in stark contrast to the isolated nature of his private life. A Glenn Gould-like eccentric, the Canadian pianist was similarly brilliant, articulate, and lonely. Stallman considers himself afflicted, to some degree, by autism: a condition that, he says, makes it difficult for him to interact with people.
3.
See Steve Silberman, “The Geek Syndrome”,
4.
Regrettably, I did not get a chance to interview Daniel Stallman for this book. During the early research for this book, Stallman informed me that his father suffered from Alzheimer’s. When I resumed research in late 2001, I learned, sadly, that Daniel Stallman had died earlier in the year.
5.
Stallman, an atheist, would probably quibble with this description. Suffice it to say, it was something Stallman welcomed. See previous note 1: “As soon as I heard about computers, I wanted to see one and play with one”.
Chapter 4 notes
1.
See Michael Gross, “Richard Stallman: High School Misfit, Symbol of Free Software, MacArthur-certified Genius” (1999).
2.
Carmine DeSapio holds the dubious distinction of being the first Italian-American boss of Tammany Hall, the New York City political machine. For more information on DeSapio and the politics of post-war New York, see John Davenport, “Skinning the Tiger: Carmine DeSapio and the End of the Tammany Era”,
3.
Chess, another Columbia Science Honors Program alum, describes the protests as “background noise”. “We
