
Linus Torvalds Remembers the Days Before ‘Open Source’ - ogcricket
https://thenewstack.io/linus-torvalds-remembers-the-days-before-open-source/
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jgh
This seems to be an article about the origin of the term "open source" and not
about what the world was like before open source. I also found it funny that
Linus' original response to the question was "I honestly don't remember".

~~~
jordigh
An amazing amount of people forget what this was like and think that we've
always had "open source", whatever it was called. Many will vehemently argue
against the OSI definition of open source, despite them coining the term,
because they're very convinced that everyone knew what open source was in 1995
and everyone used it since at least 1970.

It's important to remember this history. In a way, free software (or open
source) was the only way to originally do software. You bought a machine, and
the manufacturer would just give you the source code, because how could you
operate the machine otherwise? People didn't even think software was
copyrightable at first.

Whenever you have old people like rms mourning about the current state of
software, that's because they remember what it was like when all software was
free. This happened, and remembering the origins of the term "open source" is
a way to memorialise that.

[http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-
forgot...](http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten-
about-open-source/)

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smudgymcscmudge
I have to admit that the switch from “free software” to “open source” worked
on me. Early in my career I was intrigued by the idea, but couldn’t get past
how “free” software was a sustainable model. I started to get it at around the
same time the terminology changed.

On a related note, I heard the word shareware last week. It made me happy when
I realized how long it had been since I had thought about shareware.

~~~
jordigh
And what about now, how do you think that open source is good for business in
ways free software is not?

I think the majority opinion, judging by the likes of gitlab, is to use some
or a lot of open source to entice people to pay you for plain ol' proprietary
software. Closed shell, or open core.

It looks like there's only room for one RedHat in the world, only one company
who truly sells free software. As I understand it, you can pay Red Hat for
access to their repos, which provide free software with source code, and
nothing else. They really do plainly sell free software, but I think they call
it "self-supported" or similar.

edit: I'm of course aware that RH sells support. I just don't know any other
company that plainly sells free software like RH also does. I wonder why no
one else even tries.

~~~
smudgymcscmudge
My previous reply wasn't clear. It wasn't the difference between the meanings
of open source and free software that changed my mind. It was the terminology
change that helped rid me of the mental image of working for free. Now I
realize there is a world of difference between free and open source software,
but I didn't know that at the time.

As for now, I think free software is good for business. My company works on
dozens of free libraries, and it's good for our business because we end up
running better code than what we could write by ourselves. When you consider
whether it is "good for business", you need to consider that most businesses
don't sell software. Of course GitLab and others won't ever be able to sell
free software, but that doesn't mean it isn't good for business.

I have mixed feelings about open source projects that are built by single
companies who sell enterprise versions. It's often handy to have them around,
but I wouldn't consider contributing anything significant to them after seeing
instances where PRs remain unmerged because they compete with the enterprise-
version.

~~~
jordigh
> Now I realize there is a world of difference between free and open source
> software

There isn't. It's essentially the same set of software. That's the whole point
of OSI. To just rebrand it. It's like saying that there's a world of a
difference between global warming and climate change, or freedom fighters and
rebel insurgents.

~~~
smudgymcscmudge
Now that I know you have that perspective, I'm curious what you meant by your
previous question, "And what about now, how do you think that open source is
good for business in ways free software is not?"

~~~
jordigh
I think you already answered, in a way. When they called the same software by
a different name, you stopped thinking that money was disallowed. You repeated
that you (only?) think about what is good for business. So, yeah, OSI's
rebranding worked. Same software, but focus on the business side.

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manyoso
The title is misleading. It really isn't about Linus' memories of days before
"Open Source" so much as trying to figure out who coined the term.

~~~
smudgymcscmudge
I think the quotes in the title make it clear that it’s about the term. I’m
not sure the quotes were there when you commented, for hn makes a habit of
correcting titles.

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mmjaa
I'm old enough to remember the days when saying something was "Open Source"
meant, simply, we had the sources for something and could use them for our
needs.

Around .. '84 / '85, there used to be these great little systems from MIPS
that ran Risc/OS. Any time we'd get an update to Risc/OS, we'd spend a few
days rebuilding drivers and whatnot, for our production systems - these
drivers were "open source", in that they required us to compile them
ourselves. (I think they were from the PROGRESS RDBMS product...)

Back in the days of USENET, any code that was posted to groups like
comp.lang.c was considered 'open source' \- it was just a description of the
sources, whether they were available or not. There wasn't any attribution of
value - whether it was free or not - just whether or not we had access to it
.. or not.

Nowadays there is all sorts of stigma and hubris around the subject - but back
when computers were something you had to visit in a special room designed for
the purpose, all it really meant was whether we had permission to read the
source - and do things with it - or not. There wasn't a commercial value
assignment, really, until the mid-90's, when people realised there was immense
value in open source business models (RedHat, et al.) ...

~~~
jordigh
> Back in the days of USENET, any code that was posted to groups like
> comp.lang.c was considered 'open source'

If this were true, you should be able to find many Usenet postings that use
this term to describe the software. We have the archives. The article indeed
attempts this search and doesn't find it.

There is an unrelated older meaning of "open source" from "open source
intelligence", but the idea that the meaning of "open source" as "source
visible" was widespread before 1998 seems false. Perhaps some people had heard
of it, but it was not widely understood.

Indeed, in the article, two of the Usenet hits for "open source" are "open
source material", which can be disregarded as the older meaning of "open
source intelligence", which means to collect data from people from things like
phone books. The other hit is of dubious meaning.

~~~
mmjaa
Re: Usenet, I believe that the point we're both orbiting around is that for as
long as source code has been 'a thing', we've had to share it among ourselves
to do anything decent with it.

There is certainly an event horizon wherein computing platforms became
entirely too sophisticated to support 'open source' everything - at a very
early period of computing history, perhaps - but I do believe that source code
has always been open. Its the fact of code going closed, multiple times, and
now persistently, that is confabulating everything. I maintain this is the
inverse function.

~~~
jordigh
Sure, there's plenty of evidence that the attitude to share code existed and
that in the beginning nobody even thought you could copyright software. But
calling it "open source" is a relatively recent thing.

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realworldview
What a strange article. Clearly disturbed by the values and _confusion_ with
the term free, it doesn’t delve into the significant body of work that existed
prior to 1998, except for a passing quote, and how such software enabled many
things, including the Linux Kernel. I can only presume the ad space associated
with this article is valuable because it certainly isn’t an historically
interesting or accurate piece.

