Chapter 49: The Bet

After lunch, Huang Ya returned to the Flagship Store to continue as manager, while Di Ye carried a backpack and took a taxi with Xia Fangfei to Yun University to find Liu Shaosong and his wife.

The two got off at the North Gate of Yun University. After walking along the main campus road for a while, Xia Fangfei saw the girls' dormitory building in the distance. She sighed almost inaudibly and said with a sense of loss, "It's only been a dozen days of break, so why do I feel like a lifetime has passed?"

Seeing the faint sorrow veiled in her eyes, Di Ye originally wanted to say something joking to change the atmosphere, but as the words reached his lips, he changed his mind and softly hummed a line of lyrics: "Love makes this girl grow up overnight."

The singing was not beautiful, and the lyrics were quite plain, but they touched the softest part of Xia Fangfei's heart. Tears spilled out uncontrollably like a breached lake. She didn't bother to wipe them, stopped in her tracks, looked up, and asked, "Di Ye, do you love me?"

"I love you."

Di Ye answered without a hint of hesitation or doubt, then reached out his right hand, gently wiped the tears from her cheeks, and added, "Don't force yourself to cater to me and wrong yourself in the future."

Hearing the confession she had always longed for and receiving the understanding she had always hoped for, Xia Fangfei laughed through her tears. The sorrow in her eyes vanished completely, looking like peach blossoms after spring rain—both charming and shy. She stomped her foot and clarified, "I didn't force myself to cater to you!"

"Yes, you didn't. You're just lustful."

"I am not lustful."

"Yes, you aren't lustful. You just like to exercise in bed, and you like to entice your best friend to exercise together."

"I didn't entice her, I was just curious... curious about how you two exercise."

"Really?"

The two bantered and laughed all the way from the teaching area to the faculty residential area. When they were almost at Liu Shaosong's house, Xia Fangfei grew a bit nervous, stopped on the side of the road, took a mirror out of her handbag to check, and complained, "It's all your fault for smudging my makeup."

"It's fine, Teacher Liu won't notice, and even if Sister Wenjing notices, she won't mind."

"Will Sister Wenjing agree to be the president of the Film Fan Club?"

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

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

Hearing the bell, Fu Wenjing walked out of the house and greeted them with a smile, "Di Ye, why didn't you come earlier? Your Teacher Liu and I have been waiting for you for a long time."

"I was too busy today, I couldn't help it. Sister Wenjing, this is my girlfriend, Xia Fangfei, from the English Department of the Foreign Languages Institute."

"No wonder you've become more lively lately; so you've found such a beautiful girlfriend. Come in, don't be a stranger."

Fu Wenjing led them into the house, opened the shoe cabinet in the entryway, took out a pair of new slippers for Xia Fangfei, and said, "Student Xia, I think I saw you yesterday. You were working as a secretary at the video store, right?"

Xia Fangfei had a "party animal" personality; she was very nervous before things happened, but once the moment arrived, she wasn't nervous at all. She explained with a well-behaved expression, "That was my brother. He was doing market research yesterday and asked me to pretend to be his secretary to help set the scene."

"So that's how it is."

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

Di Ye spread his hands toward Xia Fangfei, signaling that his previous prediction was correct, then walked into the study and closed the door behind him.

Seeing this, Fu Wenjing sighed and said, "Student Xia, don't mind him. Our Shaosong is just like that; once he encounters something related to computers, he forgets how to interact with people."

"Sister Wenjing, we are truly in the same boat. Di Ye is the same. When he went to Jinling to see my brother on the second day of the Lunar New Year, he spent hours talking about electronic circuits and left me aside. It was so embarrassing."

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

"When Di Ye came, he said he wanted to chat with Teacher Liu for the afternoon. Let's ignore them and watch a movie together. I brought the discs for the top ten classic movies of 1994."

"That's great! Which ten movies are they?"

The soundproofing of the study was quite good; once the door was closed, the sounds from outside could no longer be heard. Di Ye took off his backpack, placed it on the floor by the desk, and teased, "Teacher Liu, I didn't bring a gift today, and you won't even give me a glass of water. How fickle human relationships are."

"If you want water, go pour it yourself later."

Liu Shaosong didn't banter with Di Ye as he usually did, but instead took out several A4 sheets of paper and said, "I contacted an old classmate working in the United States and asked him to help collect some feedback on those articles of yours from the internet. Take a look."

Di Ye was both surprised and delighted, asking, "How was the feedback sent to Yuncheng?"

"He sent it via email to another old classmate in Pujiang, who then printed it out and faxed it to me."

"That's really troublesome."

"It is indeed troublesome."

Di Ye sat down in the chair across from the desk, took the A4 sheets, and quickly scanned them. He found that most were comments from well-known figures in the industry, and they were all very short. The most typical example came from Linus Torvalds, who was still only moderately famous in 1995; the content was just one English word—interesting!

Xiao Honghua and I worked so hard to write tens of thousands of words, helping you raise the banner of Open Source Software 3 years early, and you, this guy, actually dismissed it with just one word?

That's too unkind!

Besides the short comments, there were a few longer discussions. The most important one came from the founder of the Free Software Movement, Richard Stallman. He wrote over a thousand words, arguing that the term "Open Source Software" was a desecration and betrayal of free software and must be boycotted.

"...'Free Software' and 'Open Source Software' basically refer to the same range of programs. However, the difference is that free software is a movement fighting for freedom and justice, while open source software is a development model that only values practical benefits and ignores moral concepts. The goal is merely to make software 'better.' Therefore, I do not agree with the open source philosophy proposed by LRF, nor will I use the term open source software."

Seeing Di Ye staring blankly at the reply, Liu Shaosong thought he had been discouraged and advised, "Richard Stallman is a pure idealist with rather extreme views. What he says isn't necessarily right, so don't take it to heart."

"Heretics are more hateful than infidels; it really is so."

Di Ye sighed, placed the A4 sheets on the desk, and said, "Ginger is indeed spicier when it's old. I think this article analyzes it very accurately. Open Source Software is indeed just a development model, but for the vast majority of programmers, things like freedom and justice are too ethereal. Making software better is the true path."

Liu Shaosong had encountered a lot of information in this area while studying in Dongying and felt the same way. He said, "I feel like the Free Software Movement is a product of code mixed with law, which sometimes makes people feel at a loss. The term open source software is clear and easy to accept, it just needs time."

It certainly needs time.

The reason Open Source Software began in 1998 was that Microsoft was sweeping the globe with Windows 95 and Windows 98 at the time, causing giants like IBM, SUN, AOL, and Oracle to feel a huge sense of crisis. They had to put aside their prejudices and huddle together for warmth, and to avoid infighting while doing so, they had no choice but to choose open source.

However, in February 1995, Windows 95 had not yet been released, and Microsoft had not yet grown into a super bully that made all the giants feel terrified. Proposing the Open Source Software philosophy at this time was a bit too ahead of its time; it was born at the wrong time, so it was normal for it not to be taken seriously.

Di Ye had been prepared for a protracted war from the beginning and had been executing it step by step: first going to Pengcheng to get in touch with the internet, fabricating the motive for developing a Browser, and then using compression algorithms as a breakthrough to outline the prospects for developing a Browser. Now that the first two steps were basically completed, he could start the next step.

"Teacher Liu, besides time, I think we need something else, and that is an iconic open source project similar to Linux."

"You want to develop a Browser using an open source method?"

"That's right."

Liu Shaosong took a deep breath and solemnly warned, "You need to think clearly. There is basically no one in the country who knows how to develop a Browser; everything will have to rely on yourself. If you develop it closed-source and fail, you've only wasted your own time, but if you fail at open source development, you won't just waste time, you'll become a laughingstock for the whole world."

"I don't like to work behind closed doors."

Di Ye bent down, picked up the backpack by his feet, took out two thick, heavy English books from inside, and said, "Once I master the contents of these two books, it should be no problem."

Liu Shaosong looked up and saw that one was "UNIX Network Programming" and the other was "TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: Protocols." He had read the former, a classic work published by W. Richard Stevens in 1990. He hadn't seen the latter and asked, "What is this one?"

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

W. Richard Stevens was hailed as a "great technical writer" and was an authoritative expert in network programming. "TCP/IP Illustrated" was his representative work. It is said that before this set of books was published, there were no more than 100 people in the world who could truly understand the TCP/IP Protocol. Whether this rumor is true or not is impossible to know, but it is enough to illustrate its importance.

Liu Shaosong picked up the book, flipped through it for a while, and frowned, saying, "This book is written very deeply, focusing mainly on theoretical knowledge, and it's entirely in English. It's very tiring to read, and it won't be easy to master completely."

"English books are indeed tiring to read. I plan to study it while translating it into Chinese. This way, by doing both at once, I can deepen my understanding and also find a publisher to print it, earning some pocket money."

"You are quite confident."

Liu Shaosong mocked, placed the book on the table, tapped his fingers, and said, "If I were to read this book, it would take at least two or three months to roughly understand it. How long do you plan to take? Half a year or a year?"

"Ten thousand years is too long; I only seize the day. I plan to understand it in one month."

"This isn't confidence at all, it's overestimating your own abilities! Di Ye, let's make a bet. If you can understand this book in a month, you can pick anything in this room and take it away."

"What if I don't understand it?"

"Then you will stay at Yun University for graduate school and be a proper student for me."

"Teacher Liu, let's shake hands; it's a deal."