Why doesn't Sun open-source NeWS. Granted the chance of it being useable now is slim, but it would be nice to see Sun try to make up for one of the biggest sins in the history of computer science.
I truly believe that if Sun had open-sourced a reference implementation of NeWS back in 1985 that right now it would be Scott McNealy on the government witness stand right now and everybody as SlashDot would call them $un. This is because Sun would be in control of the NeWS standard and could propose and release any enhancements to it before anybody else. They could also close-source it, or close-source the enhancements (like people worry about MSoft doing with.net), if they wanted. But to do any of this it had to be accepted, and it was not going to be accepted when it cost vast amounts of money and there was another thing (X) that, while obviousy 100 times crappier, was free (well $115 for a tape of the source code).
NeWS (Score:2)
I truly believe that if Sun had open-sourced a reference implementation of NeWS back in 1985 that right now it would be Scott McNealy on the government witness stand right now and everybody as SlashDot would call them $un. This is because Sun would be in control of the NeWS standard and could propose and release any enhancements to it before anybody else. They could also close-source it, or close-source the enhancements (like people worry about MSoft doing with .net), if they wanted. But to do any of this it had to be accepted, and it was not going to be accepted when it cost vast amounts of money and there was another thing (X) that, while obviousy 100 times crappier, was free (well $115 for a tape of the source code).