Ask HN: Before Open Source took over the server, what was the discourse like?

4 pointsmbgerring8h ago1 comments

My understanding of the early Internet is that there was fierce competition among commercial, closed-source server and database software, and that the dominance of Linux, Apache, MySQL (and now PostgreSQL) etc were far from obvious or guaranteed. I think we’re in a similar moment with LLMs, and I’d love to read some stories, or see some examples of discourse on mailing lists, forums, or whatever on this subject from that earlier period. I think it would be helpful for grounding present-day discussions. What can you share from this era?

1 comments

wmf1h ago

It was definitely like that. One landmark that comes to mind is the Microsoft "Halloween documents" attempting to slow the rise of open source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents Microsoft also advertised NT and IIS as being faster than Linux (implicitly admitting that Linux was worth considering) which motivated a lot of back-and-forth "benchmaxing". http://www.mindcraft.com/whitepapers/first-nts4rhlinux.html https://www.kegel.com/nt-linux-benchmarks.html

Sun was also a huge loser to open source and x86 but instead of fighting it their CEO Jonathan Schwartz embraced it. In retrospect this "Glasnost" approach didn't help Sun survive. I remember the Sun fans used to complain that Linux/x86 was winning in benchmarks but Sun was worth paying N times more (of your employer's money) because it just felt faster and more robust. Parallels to today are left as an exercise for the reader.

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wmf1h ago

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