wild 1995

Chapter 49 Bet
After lunch, Huang Ya continued to work as the manager of the flagship store, while Di Ye carried a backpack and took Xia Fangfei by taxi to Yunda to find Liu Shaosong and his wife.

The two got off at the north gate of Yunda University, and after walking along the main road of the campus for a while, Xia Fangfei saw the girls' dormitory building in the distance, sighed inaudibly, and lost her way: "It's only a dozen days of vacation, why do I feel like a lifetime away?"

Seeing the slight sadness between her eyebrows, Di Ye originally wanted to say a few jokes to change the atmosphere, but changed his mind when he got to his mouth, and hummed a line of lyrics softly: "Love made this girl grow up overnight."

The singing was not beautiful, and the lyrics were very plain, but it touched the softest part of Xia Fangfei's heart. Tears overflowed uncontrollably like a lake that broke its embankment. She didn't bother to wipe it off. She stopped and asked, "Di Ye, do you love me?"

"I love you."

Without any hesitation or hesitation, Di Ye answered immediately, then stretched out his right hand, gently wiped away the tears on her cheeks, and added: "Don't deliberately cater to me again, and wrong yourself."

Xia Fangfei heard the confession she had been longing for, and also got the understanding she had been looking forward to. She laughed through tears, and the sadness between her brows completely disappeared, like a peach blossom after a spring rain. She was both delicate and shy. She clarified, "I didn't intentionally cater to you!"

"Yes, you don't, you're just lustful."

"I'm not lewd."

"Yes, you are not lecherous, you just like to exercise on the bed, and you like to lure your girlfriends to exercise together."

"I'm not seducing her, I'm just curious... how you two work out."

"really?"

The two played and laughed all the way, from the teaching area to the teaching staff's residential area. When they arrived at Liu Shaosong's house, Xia Fangfei was a little nervous. She stood by the side of the road and did not leave. She took out a mirror from her bag and took a look.

"It's okay. Teacher Liu won't notice you. Even if Sister Wen Jing notices, she won't care."

"Will Sister Wen Jing agree to be the president of the fan club?"

"Whether she agrees or not depends entirely on your ability. I have to discuss my graduation thesis with Mr. Liu, so I can't help you."

Di Ye grabbed Xia Fangfei who wanted to retreat, escorted her to the courtyard of Liu Shaosong's house, and rang the doorbell.

When Fu Wenjing heard the ringing, she came out of the house and greeted with a smile: "Di Ye, why don't you come earlier, you and Teacher Liu have been waiting for you for a long time."

"I'm too busy today, there's nothing I can do. Sister Wen Jing, this is my girlfriend Xia Fangfei, from the English Department of the School of Foreign Languages."

"No wonder you have become more lively than before recently. It turns out that you have such a beautiful girlfriend. Come in quickly. You are welcome."

Fu Wenjing led the two of them into the house, opened the shoe cabinet at the entrance, took out a pair of new slippers for Xia Fangfei, and said, "Student Xia, I seem to have seen you yesterday. You are working as a secretary in a video store, right?"

Xia Fangfei has a crazy personality. She was very nervous before something happened, but she didn't get nervous when it happened. She explained with a cute face, "That's my brother. He's going to do market research yesterday. He asked me to pretend to be a secretary to help set off my identity."

"So it is."

Hearing the voice, Liu Shaosong walked to the door of the study, ignored Xia Fangfei, and said impatiently to Di Ye, "Come here, I'll show you something."

Di Ye spread his hands to Xia Fangfei, indicating that his prediction just now was correct, then walked into the study, and closed the door smoothly.

Seeing this, Fu Wenjing sighed, and said, "Student Xia, don't worry about it. Our Shaosong family has this personality. Whenever we encounter things on the computer, we forget how to deal with people."

"Sister Wen Jing, we really feel sorry for each other. Di Ye is also like this. He went to Jinling to meet my brother on the second day of the first lunar month. He chatted for hours about electronic circuits and left me aside. He was so embarrassed."

"Really? But this is indeed Di Ye's style. Every time he comes to my house, he and Shaosong will chat endlessly in the study."

"When Di Ye came, he said he wanted to chat with Mr. Liu for an afternoon. Let's leave them alone and watch a movie together. I brought the CD of the top ten classic movies in 1994."

"Great, what ten movies are there?"

The sound insulation effect of the study room is good. After closing the door, you can't hear the sound from the outside. Di Ye took off the backpack and put it on the floor beside the desk, and joked: "Mr. Liu, I didn't bring a gift when I came here today, and you didn't even give me a glass of water. It's really human, and the world is cold."

"If you want to drink water, you will pour it yourself."

Instead of joking with Di Ye as before, Liu Shaosong took out a few A4 papers and said, "I contacted an old classmate who works in the United States and asked him to help collect some feedback on your articles from the Internet. You can take a look."

Di Ye was both surprised and delighted, and asked, "How did the feedback reach Yuncheng?"

"He emailed it to another old classmate in Pujiang, then printed it out and faxed it to me."

"It's so troublesome."

"It's really troublesome."

Di Ye sat down on the chair opposite the desk, took the few A4 papers, and quickly browsed through them. He found that most of them were comments from well-known people in the industry, and they were very short. The most typical example came from Linus Torvalds, who was still a little famous in 1995. The content only contained one English word—interesting!

Xiaohonghua and I worked so hard to write tens of thousands of words, and set up the banner of open source software for you 3 years in advance. You guy actually just dismissed it with only one word?

Too unkind!
In addition to comments, there are several lengthy discussions, the most important of which comes from the founder of free software, Richard Stallman, who wrote thousands of words to demonstrate that the term "open source software" is a blasphemy and betrayal of free software, and must be resisted.

"...'Free software' and 'open source software' basically refer to programs in the same scope. However, the difference is that free software is a movement fighting for freedom and justice, and open source software is a development model that only focuses on practical interests and ignores moral concepts.

Seeing Di Ye staring at the reply in a daze, Liu Shaosong thought he had been hit, and persuaded him: "Richard Stallman is a pure idealist with extreme ideas, and what he said may not be right. Don't take it to heart."

"Heretics are more hateful than heretics, and so it is."

Di Ye sighed with emotion, put those A4 papers on the desk, and said, "Jiang is still old and hot. I think the analysis of this article is very accurate. Open source software is indeed just a development model, but for most programmers, freedom and fairness are too illusory. Making software better is the kingly way."

Liu Shaosong came into contact with a lot of information in this regard when he was studying in Dongying, and he felt the same way. He said: "I feel that the free software movement is like a product of a mixture of codes and laws. Sometimes people are at a loss. The term open source software is clear and easy to accept, but it takes time."

It does take time.

The reason why open source software started in 1998 was because Microsoft swept the world with Windows 95 and Windows 98 at that time, causing giants such as IBM, SUN, AOL, and Oracel to have a huge sense of crisis.

However, in February 1995, Windows 2 had not yet been released, and Microsoft had not yet grown into a super bully that would scare all the giants. At this time, it was a bit too advanced to propose the concept of open source software.

Di Ye has been prepared for a protracted war from the very beginning, and has been implementing it step by step. First, he went to Pengcheng to get in touch with the Internet, fabricated the motivation for developing a browser, and then used the compression algorithm as a breakthrough to outline the prospect of developing a browser. Now that the first two steps are basically completed, the next step can be started.

"Mr. Liu, besides time, I think there is another thing that is needed, and that is an iconic open source project like Linux."

"You want to develop browsers in an open source way?"

"Yes."

Liu Shaosong took a deep breath, and solemnly reminded: "You have to think clearly, basically no one in China knows how to develop a browser, and everything can only be done by yourself. If closed-source research and development fails, it is just a waste of personal time, but if open-source research and development fails, it will not only waste time, but also become the laughing stock of the whole world."

"I don't like working behind closed doors."

Di Ye bent down and picked up the backpack at his feet, took out two thick tomes in English, and said, "When I master the contents of these two books, it should be fine."

Liu Shaosong looked up and found that one was "UNIX Network Programming" and the other was "TCP/IP Detailed Explanation Volume 1: Protocol". He had read the former one, which was a classic book published by W. Richard Stevens in 1990, but he had never seen the latter one. He asked, "What is this book?"

Di Ye pushed the book over and introduced: "This book was also written by Richard Stevens. It was just published last year. It is currently the best book explaining the TCP/IP protocol in the world. I asked a friend to buy it from Hong Kong."

W. Richard Stevens is known as a "great technical writer" and is an authoritative expert in network programming. "TCP/IP Detailed Explanation" is his masterpiece. It is said that before this book is published, there are no more than 100 people in the world who can understand the TCP/IP protocol. It is impossible to know whether this rumor is true or not, but it is enough to illustrate its importance.

Liu Shaosong picked up the book, flipped through it for a while, and said with a frown: "This book is written in depth, mainly based on theoretical knowledge, and it's all in English. It's very tiring to read, and it's not easy to master it completely."

"The English book is really tiring. I plan to study it and translate it into Chinese at the same time. This is a two-pronged approach. I can not only deepen my understanding, but also find a publishing house to publish it and earn some pocket money."

"You are quite confident."

Liu Shaosong mocked, put the book on the table, tapped his fingers and said, "If I let me read this book, it will take me at least two or three months to get a general understanding of it. How long do you plan to use it? Six months or a year?"

"1 years is too long, seize the day, I plan to understand it in a month."

"It's not self-confidence at all, but overestimation! Di Ye, let's make a bet, if you can understand this book and all the things in this room within a month, you can choose one and take it away."

"What if I don't understand?"

"Then you stay in Yunda to study in graduate school, and be a good student to me."

"Ms. Liu, let's shake hands and make a deal."

　The lyrics quoted in this chapter are from Liang Jingru's "Grow Up Overnight".

　　Richard Stallman's remarks are adapted from his 2007 article "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software"

　　
　
(End of this chapter)