= Сообщение: 8001 из 12494 ====================================== ENET.SYSOP = От : Gerrit Kuehn 2:240/12 27 Dec 18 21:03:12 Кому : Björn Felten 27 Dec 18 21:03:12 Тема : Happy 35th birthday to Fidonet! FGHI : area://ENET.SYSOP?msgid=2:240/12+5bf467eb На : area://ENET.SYSOP?msgid=2:203/2+5c2518f2 = Кодировка сообщения определена как: LATIN1 ================================= ============================================================================== Hello Björn!
27 Dec 18 19:24, Björn Felten wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:
GK>> However, why should I deny the important role people like Bell, Morse GK>> or Edison played in making technology available to many people?
BF> Well, I think it boils down to your personal philosophy. Do you BF> think that people trying to make money of ideas that other people BF> came up with, but didn't bother to patent, are worth given credit for BF> those other person's achievements?
Depends. For one on if the person knew about the other person's achievements. For other on what else needed to be done. There have been incandescent light bulbs before Edison. However, Edison was able to improve them in terms of lifetime, added a socket (it's still called Edison socket E27 these days) to make them easily exchangable, and was able to deliver a full product including electricity generators, distribution etc. And yes, he was running a company and wanted to make money from the technology as much as he could. However, even today we still use technology that he helped inventing and popularising. Talking about electrical light, there is no way around him and giving kudos to him. Who knows how our lighting would look like without him? What would you, on the other hand, suggest to do? Ignore everyone who tried to sell an invention instead of giving it away for free?
BF> All I (and I think Ward) is trying to say is, that Tom Jennings BF> did absolutely nothing to further our BBS network from before the BF> internet made it publicly available almost free of charge.
If that is the actual and only criticism, it was very well hidden. Thanks for clarifying. Ward's apparent claim that no-one could provide code Tom actually wrote to make the network run, made it sound to me as if he was trying to say something different. And you have also been swaggering about code quality and programming languages in the first place, obviously without any background knowledge (although the code is readily available on github). So please forgive me if I didn't understand the real root of both your criticisms. As I already said... it was well hidden up to now.
BF> Copy-writing, trademarking and so on all along, was just to BF> protect his commercial interests. You'll be surprised to read about BF> the costs he offered "his" fidonet for to the BBS community, but it's BF> documented in the early issues of the Fidonews, now for all to see.
I don't think I need to look that up. He invented something and tried to sell it, so what? See Edison above, it happens all the time with new ideas.
BF> I'd say that fidonet survived despite the greedy Tom Jennings and BF> ilks, not thanks to him. As I said, read all about it in the early BF> Fidonews issues.
I never suggested to "thank" Tom for anything, nor did I say that he was the only or the most important person in the game. However, my point was that we are here, communicating, because of what he did. He achieved something that lasted for way longer than anybody could anticipate, even if it was unintentionally from his side, and other people picked up the baton to continue. Moreover, what I find especially unneeded is going after someone verbally in that kind of tone, knowing he is not around to say anything about his side of the story.
