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The Open-Source Software Superposition
You’ve heard of Open Source Software, but why does it matter?
I remember a Christmas morning, back when I was in middle school, on which I sat in front of the tree and unwrapped a boxed copy of RedHat Linux for my non-Internet connected Pentium. I had no idea what I had even asked for. Linux was a mysterious entity that I knew only from whispers on online bulletin boards. I stared, wide-eyed, at that beautiful red fedora. Perhaps it’s because I just finished season two of Rings of Power — but I was Galadriel gazing at the first Elven rings.
In retrospect, it’s incredible that my parents figured out where to even find such a thing, let alone buy it for their middle-schooler.
As I recall, the “instruction manual” was simply an alphabetized list, maybe 10 pages long of what I believed to be Dark Magic, in the form of completely unexplained Linux commands. The only real help was that on the first page, it explained the One Command to Rule Them All: man.
Perhaps the best way I can explain what this felt like as a kid is to compare it to playing Minecraft in the early days, when you still bought the game for $10 on Notch’s personal webpage. No one knew how to craft anything, or what recipes even existed. The punishing mystery was the game. Creative Mode be damned — Survival Mode was the true realm of…
