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========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 02:50:04 -0500
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@THYRSUS.COM>
Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Subject: Re: Free software
X-To: dkw@cs.brandeis.edu
In-Reply-To: <199812021851.NAA02944@straw.cs.brandeis.edu>; from David
Wittenberg on Wed, Dec 02, 1998 at 01:51:57PM -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
David Wittenberg <dkw@cs.brandeis.edu>:
>In the freeware category, it would be hard to tell when the first freeware came out, as much (if not most) of the early software was free if you bought the hardware it ran on. For more portable code, TeX was available by 1978, and news by the early 80s. Adventure spread widely even earlier than that.
Come to think of it, ADVENT may be the first piece of software I personally heard of that propagated the way "free software" later did. That was in early 1977, I think.
>I don't know about the FSF style, which I think esr is asking about here, but to make the question clear, we must distinguish it from "freeware".
I wouldn't call it "FSF style"; the FSF ideologized it, but collaborative development in what I've since labeled the "bazaar" style didn't seem a novel idea when RMS first explained his GNU plans to me at Boskone in 1983 (or maybe '82).
(BTW, members of this list might find the following interesting:
I believe it was in that same conversation that I figuratively knuckle-rapped RMS for not having figured out yet what GNU's first big project ought to be. "Richard," I said, thinking of the Gosmacs I'd been hacking on, "You wrote *Emacs*..."
>From that day to this I have bever forgotten the vaguely stunned look
that dawned on his face. Yes, Best Beloved, that's how GNU Emacs came to be...
RMS has said that he doesn't remember the conversation, but also that he believes my report that it happened. :-)) --
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@THYRSUS.COM>
Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Subject: Re: Free software
X-To: dkw@cs.brandeis.edu
In-Reply-To: <199812021851.NAA02944@straw.cs.brandeis.edu>; from David
Wittenberg on Wed, Dec 02, 1998 at 01:51:57PM -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
David Wittenberg <dkw@cs.brandeis.edu>:
>In the freeware category, it would be hard to tell when the first freeware came out, as much (if not most) of the early software was free if you bought the hardware it ran on. For more portable code, TeX was available by 1978, and news by the early 80s. Adventure spread widely even earlier than that.
Come to think of it, ADVENT may be the first piece of software I personally heard of that propagated the way "free software" later did. That was in early 1977, I think.
>I don't know about the FSF style, which I think esr is asking about here, but to make the question clear, we must distinguish it from "freeware".
I wouldn't call it "FSF style"; the FSF ideologized it, but collaborative development in what I've since labeled the "bazaar" style didn't seem a novel idea when RMS first explained his GNU plans to me at Boskone in 1983 (or maybe '82).
(BTW, members of this list might find the following interesting:
I believe it was in that same conversation that I figuratively knuckle-rapped RMS for not having figured out yet what GNU's first big project ought to be. "Richard," I said, thinking of the Gosmacs I'd been hacking on, "You wrote *Emacs*..."
>From that day to this I have bever forgotten the vaguely stunned look
that dawned on his face. Yes, Best Beloved, that's how GNU Emacs came to be...
RMS has said that he doesn't remember the conversation, but also that he believes my report that it happened. :-)) --
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188
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