RE: The Corporation for Public Software/Natianal Endowment for the Bits

[Chuck Swiger <cswiger@widomaker.com>]

  From: 	franklin@ideas4you.com[SMTP:franklin@ideas4you.com]
  In <349E2012.67A133D2@blarg.net>, on 12/22/97 
  >   at 03:08 AM, Mark Hinds <zoro@blarg.net> said:
  >
  >>I've been thinking of how to get Uncle Sam to create something like PBS
  >>(CPB) for Software. It would be very helpful if most of the groups
  
  >May I ask, who is NSF and are they government funded.
  
  National Science Foundation, what used to run the Internet for a while.
  
  "The National Science Foundation is an independent agency of the U.S. Government, established by the
  National Science Foundation Act of 1950. The NSF's mission is to promote the progress of science; to
  advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense."
  
  >If it was government funded then it would really be free would it.  The
  >tax paying citizens of this country would be paying for, YOU A LINUX USER,
  >to have FREE software that wasn't available for any other OS.  I'm sorry,
  
  It most certainly would NOT be free, and would not be foised on anyone who didn't
  want it, but would be a public standard for software and data interchange for those
  who 1) want to leverage the power of modern data processing 2) don't want to
  edit their CONFIG.SYS file. Again, for this to fly, it'd have to have the support
  of enough public to get some legislators to sign their careers onto it. And how many
  households have PC's? What's the demographics? How many are happy with them
  and how many are discontented?
  
  >that, don't get me wrong, but most people just do not know enough about
  >computers to use any form of UNIX.  Don't get me wrong,  I do programming
  
  Most people don't know enough about electronics or internal combustion engines
  but can use a microwave, watch TV or drive a car (as long as they stay out of
  or aren't tempted to mess with the 'guts').
  
  Notice also, that this would not directly effect any of your Java/Web programming 
  done on your os of choice, if your final sellable product runs on the naive consumers
  *nix box. What a 'default' consumer os standard (which we all agree is currently 
  the privately owned M$ standard) would hurt is those who develope and sell into
  that monopoly. A public os standard is 'just another alternative' - if someone wants
  to buy and use Warp, NT, Win9X, etc, they can. If they want something 'basically'
  operational and trusted they can buy the govt. standard. Granted, it'd be like
  issuing a currency, and will have to maintain a high level of 'trust' so if, say,
  your hard drive craps out, the hw vendor won't have an escape of saying
  "oh, it's that buggy govt. software again!", w/ the innocent consumer left holding
  the bag.
  
  You get this public domain CD - it's widely known, approved by academia, publically
  debatable, you install it on your Intel monopol-box and it runs (what ports to other
  hw platforms would do, like MS's "hardware abstraction layer", to the
  'standard' I haven't a clue). Any problem is a 'flaky system board'. You can wipe it
  and install NT, OS/2, System8, your choice. It's just a choice for those who have no
  choice except for, currently, M$.
  
  
  Chuck
  cswiger@widomaker.com