The Greatest of All Time!

This Information Week Story has the greateast software programs of all time as mediated by Charles Babcock. On of the most interesting about the article is his approach to greatness. Simplicity and over impact on the computing world. The list is pretty sold, and one I sorta agree with. I hate to do this but I am gonna sum up his list right here.

1. Unix - Specifically BSD 4.3 which you can find in pretty much every version of Windows and Linux.
   
2. IBM's System R - which which spawned every relational database project in the world including Oracle, PostGRES, MySql etc.
   
3. The gene-sequencing software at the Institute for Genomic Research. An elegantly written program designed to decode the human genome.
   
4. IBM System 360 OS
   
5. Java - Now new and improved with open sourcing power!
   
6. Mosaic - The little browser that could
   
7. Sabre System - Airline reservations made easy.
   
8. Macintosh OS - Perfecting PARC's innovation.
   
9. Excel - Perfecting the spreadsheet
   
10. Apollo Guidance System
    
11. Google's Page Rank System
    
12. Morris Worm - In 1988, reminding everyone what a bitch Sendmail was/is.
    

I like the fact that he zeroed in on a little version of Unix that has descendents in nearly every single operating system on the planet. The DNS and BIND stack in all of Windows was taken from BSD 4.3 and the current Macintosh operating system was taken from BSD. Naturally because of the nature of the BSD license, it found it's way into Linux. Fuddites like to belittle the contribution of open source software but let's be clear here. Without free software, there is no Internet - just a bunch of Compuserves.