Microsoft’s operating system is encountering a heated battle from two fronts: open-source software and Apple. Open-source programmers seek to share their code for an operating system freely over the Internet which contrasts with Microsoft who seeks to keep its code proprietary. Apple is also competing with Microsoft by trying to create a different kind of operating system, one that is creative, unique and changes the way people use information. Both the open-source programmers and the Apple programmers (Mac OS X), use a variation of UNIX for their operating systems.
Open-source software is available for anyone to use or modify free of charge. Most software companies allow only their programmers to make changes to source code; but with open-source software, the source code for software is not copyrighted and anyone can make changes. Many programmers, who embraced open-source code in college, are now in the workforce and have reached the point where they are now “quietly been bringing free software in through the back doors of industry ... They do so not from altruistic motives, but rather to bring better code to their work.” (DiBona, 1999)
1969 was the year that a Bell’s Lab employee named Kenneth Thompson invented UNIX. Dennis Ritchie invented a new language called C for use with this new program. For the first 10 years, all work was done in AT&T’s Bell labs, but it wasn’t long before UNIX spread outside of AT&T, especially to universities with computer science programs. Version V6, in 1975, was the first version of UNIX that was broadly available outside of Bell Labs. This made it “easier for people outside the original group to add features and work on the UNIX source code. As a consequence UNIX was imbued with ...
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... San Francisco: No Starch Press.
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SWOT Analysis of Apple Strengths. • Apple is a very successful company. Sales of its iPod music player had increased its second quarter profits to $320 (June 2005). The favourable brand perception had also increased sales of Macintosh computers. So iPod gives the company access to a whole new series of segments that buy into other parts of the Apple brand. Sales of its notebooks products is also very strong, and represents a huge contribution to income for Apple. • Brand is all-important. Apple
An Analysis of Richer Sounds PLC 1.0 A Report on How Richer Sounds Functions 4.1 A Classification of the business according to its ownership, and an explanation of the benefits and constraints of this type of ownership Richer Sounds is part of the Private Sector, which consists of businesses who seek to make a profit. Julian Richer is the sole owner of Richer Sounds, which means he has full control over the business, but the Directors run it. Richer Sounds is a regional unlisted Public