2004-05-23
Grokline's Launch

Welcome to the launch of Grokline. We are ready for you to start to help by contributing what you know about UNIX.

We hope with this living UNIX history project to be able to identify any conceivable legal problems that those wishing to block or hobble GNU/Linux may try to use in future assaults on the community. If there are litigation risks, even just from nuisance lawsuits, particularly with respect to patents, we want to find those risks, hopefully before they do, and mitigate or resolve them now. Also, if we can carefully document prior art, we may find it comes in very handy one of these days. I am personally convinced, as you no doubt are too, that the next wave of attacks on GNU/Linux and the GPL will involve patents.

Grokline's research results will be incorporated into a copyright, patent, and trade secret-enhanced version of Eric Levenez' famous Unix History chart, something he has kindly granted us permission to do. Our chart will be made available noncommercially under a Creative Commons License. We have some design ideas that hopefully will make our chart easier to view and understand. Currently, the Levenez chart traces the code and its influences but not the ownership of it. Grokline's research will fill in that vital gap.

As you will see, this is just the first version of Grokline. In particular, we are still coding the Features/Function page, but I didn't want to postpone the launch any longer. That page should be ready shortly. As with all new code, there may be bugs. You may see ways we can improve Grokline as we go along, and that is another reason to start. Your input and ideas are valuable. This is a community project. It would be impossible to do Grokline without the help and support of an entire community dedicated to free and open source code.

So, with that, let's get started. Directions are on the How to Help page. You'll need to get an account to leave information, but you can register just by providing a handle and a working email account. Everything has been designed with the goal of doing what we reasonably can to protect your privacy, so you can participate only to the extent you wish. You can also contact me privately by email or snail mail, even anonymously, if you prefer, but the real power is in the open contributions from everyone.

I want to thank UNIX historian Peter Salus for agreeing to contribute his knowledge and skills to the Grokline Project as technical and historical advisor and Frank Sorenson, who has agreed to take on the daunting task of managing the chart revision. I am deeply indebted to MathFox for his coding mastery, and to John Crowley for the design of the Grokline site, and to Alan Canon, Frank, and John for helping MathFox prepare the site for launch. I feel a little like a woman in a shoe store, endlessly asking for a slight change here and a little tweak there. They never once lost their temper or refused to implement what I asked for, and I view it as an honor and a privilege to know and work with such wonderful people.

There is no shortage of brains in the community or of skills. That is our strength, and if we work together, I believe we can make a significant contribution with Grokline. I am very glad you are here.

PJ