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========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 03:22:53 -0600
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: Doug Yowza <yowza@YOWZA.COM>
Subject: Re: Earliest "free software"
In-Reply-To: <19981203023357.A28971@thyrsus.com> MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>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.
In the early 1980's, I was absolutely enthralled by Usenet. To me, Usenet was the genesis of net.community, and much of that community was connected via UUCP rather than via the Internet proper, so FTP wasn't an option (but there were ftp-email gateways, and I don't recall when they started, but I think gatekeeper.dec.com may have been the first).
Software sharing was a strong mark of that community, of course.
I believe other organized online communities, such as The Source, preceded Usenet and these were also marked by software sharing. Compuserve, for example, was famous for it's software archive. BBS's also preceded Usenet, and software exchange was a strong theme. But for some reason, the nature of software sharing was much different in the Unix-based Usenet community compared to the micro-centric BBS and commercial online communities. Usenet was strictly source based, and the others were almost always binary based.
I'm not sure why microcomputer software took this less-open evolutionary turn, but I think that the Unix community was characterized by erudite software hackers, while microcomputer users were mere hardware hackers and hobbyists (or you can blame Bill Gates) :-)
>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.
Have you asked Richard Stallman about this? I lusted after FSF software early on, but I got the strong sense that tape duplication fees were seen as a profit center for FSF, and that tape was archaic even when the first GPL was written.
>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.
UUNET was started at least a couple of years after net.sources was created, wasn't it?
>A key datum, which I've been unable to turn up, would be the date of the earliest news.sources postings.
I think Rich Salz created and moderated net.sources. He would know. I just know that there *must* be good Usenet archives out there somewhere. Well before DejaNews was created, people were selling "complete" Usenet archives on CD-ROM, and I think Walnut Creek had (has?) a source code CD-ROM that included all of net.sources and several other early archives.
There's a History of Usenet that includes other names that can help you pin-down dates. One copy is at:
http://www.gcg.com/staff/rose/history_of_usenet.html
-- Doug
______________________________________________________________________
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: Doug Yowza <yowza@YOWZA.COM>
Subject: Re: Earliest "free software"
In-Reply-To: <19981203023357.A28971@thyrsus.com> MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>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.
In the early 1980's, I was absolutely enthralled by Usenet. To me, Usenet was the genesis of net.community, and much of that community was connected via UUCP rather than via the Internet proper, so FTP wasn't an option (but there were ftp-email gateways, and I don't recall when they started, but I think gatekeeper.dec.com may have been the first).
Software sharing was a strong mark of that community, of course.
I believe other organized online communities, such as The Source, preceded Usenet and these were also marked by software sharing. Compuserve, for example, was famous for it's software archive. BBS's also preceded Usenet, and software exchange was a strong theme. But for some reason, the nature of software sharing was much different in the Unix-based Usenet community compared to the micro-centric BBS and commercial online communities. Usenet was strictly source based, and the others were almost always binary based.
I'm not sure why microcomputer software took this less-open evolutionary turn, but I think that the Unix community was characterized by erudite software hackers, while microcomputer users were mere hardware hackers and hobbyists (or you can blame Bill Gates) :-)
>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.
Have you asked Richard Stallman about this? I lusted after FSF software early on, but I got the strong sense that tape duplication fees were seen as a profit center for FSF, and that tape was archaic even when the first GPL was written.
>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.
UUNET was started at least a couple of years after net.sources was created, wasn't it?
>A key datum, which I've been unable to turn up, would be the date of the earliest news.sources postings.
I think Rich Salz created and moderated net.sources. He would know. I just know that there *must* be good Usenet archives out there somewhere. Well before DejaNews was created, people were selling "complete" Usenet archives on CD-ROM, and I think Walnut Creek had (has?) a source code CD-ROM that included all of net.sources and several other early archives.
There's a History of Usenet that includes other names that can help you pin-down dates. One copy is at:
http://www.gcg.com/staff/rose/history_of_usenet.html
-- Doug
______________________________________________________________________
