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========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 02:33:57 -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: Earliest "free software"
X-cc: lesk@acm.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.981202023405.17731J-100000@behemoth.host4u.net>;
from Doug Yowza on Wed, Dec 02, 1998 at 02:43:34AM -0600 Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
Doug Yowza <yowza@YOWZA.COM>:
>>I am trying to date and locate the roots of the Internet "free software" culture. Specifically, I'm trying to pin down when sharing of software over the Internet or UUCP between people with no face-to-face contact first became a routine and marked feature of hacker behavior.
>
>You might consider looking at history of "user groups," which goes *way* back. The net simply facilitated the free sharing of user-writen apps.
That's an interesting point. I think I remember hearing about the DECUS archive tapes pre-USENET, back in the late 1970s.
>An interesting tanget (given your well-known interest in Bill Gates) is Bill Gate's infamous "don't give my BASIC away for free" letter that was distributed in the mid 1970's. If you can't find a copy, let me know -- I think I have a digital version someplace.
I've seen it, thanks.
>The early RFC's document instances of software sharing as well. In fact, UUCP and similar transports were themselves freeware, so the entire net pretty was pretty much bootstrapped on freeware.
In a sense. I guess one of the milestones I'm trying to locate is the point at which Unix-related free software became (or started to be perceived as) a single network-accessible meme pool, as opposed to a bunch of relatively inaccessible offline resources like the DECUS tapes.
Or, to put it another way: something subtle and important happened between about 1976 and 1985. In 1976 there were already Unix source tapes being passed around, and there was some source evolution and exchange going on between Bell Labs and places like Waterloo. But...
If I'm recalling my experience back then correctly, the concept of Internet-accessible source archives and the Internet itelf as a culture medium of free software hadn't really taken hold. And no great surprise, as online storage in general was hideously expensive, let alone network-accessible storage. The big, net-accessible FTP archives were still years in the future.
By 1990, when I helped critique the drafts of GPL 2.0, the assumption that making source available equated to being willing to ship tapes was already archaic; it was FTP sites as far as the eye can see. But the FSF's prep site had been up since '83 or '84.
I'm trying to understand the structure and timing of the process by which we developed the expectation that all the source bits would be out there on FTP servers like UUNET's.
A key datum, which I've been unable to turn up, would be the date of the earliest news.sources postings.
--
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book
______________________________________________________________________
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: Earliest "free software"
X-cc: lesk@acm.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.981202023405.17731J-100000@behemoth.host4u.net>;
from Doug Yowza on Wed, Dec 02, 1998 at 02:43:34AM -0600 Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
Doug Yowza <yowza@YOWZA.COM>:
>>I am trying to date and locate the roots of the Internet "free software" culture. Specifically, I'm trying to pin down when sharing of software over the Internet or UUCP between people with no face-to-face contact first became a routine and marked feature of hacker behavior.
>
>You might consider looking at history of "user groups," which goes *way* back. The net simply facilitated the free sharing of user-writen apps.
That's an interesting point. I think I remember hearing about the DECUS archive tapes pre-USENET, back in the late 1970s.
>An interesting tanget (given your well-known interest in Bill Gates) is Bill Gate's infamous "don't give my BASIC away for free" letter that was distributed in the mid 1970's. If you can't find a copy, let me know -- I think I have a digital version someplace.
I've seen it, thanks.
>The early RFC's document instances of software sharing as well. In fact, UUCP and similar transports were themselves freeware, so the entire net pretty was pretty much bootstrapped on freeware.
In a sense. I guess one of the milestones I'm trying to locate is the point at which Unix-related free software became (or started to be perceived as) a single network-accessible meme pool, as opposed to a bunch of relatively inaccessible offline resources like the DECUS tapes.
Or, to put it another way: something subtle and important happened between about 1976 and 1985. In 1976 there were already Unix source tapes being passed around, and there was some source evolution and exchange going on between Bell Labs and places like Waterloo. But...
If I'm recalling my experience back then correctly, the concept of Internet-accessible source archives and the Internet itelf as a culture medium of free software hadn't really taken hold. And no great surprise, as online storage in general was hideously expensive, let alone network-accessible storage. The big, net-accessible FTP archives were still years in the future.
By 1990, when I helped critique the drafts of GPL 2.0, the assumption that making source available equated to being willing to ship tapes was already archaic; it was FTP sites as far as the eye can see. But the FSF's prep site had been up since '83 or '84.
I'm trying to understand the structure and timing of the process by which we developed the expectation that all the source bits would be out there on FTP servers like UUNET's.
A key datum, which I've been unable to turn up, would be the date of the earliest news.sources postings.
--
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book
______________________________________________________________________
