[TUHS] 386BSD released

[Clem Cole]

Thank you, Doug.

On Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 10:22 PM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> The open source movement was a revival of the old days of SHARE and other
> user groups.
>
Amen, my basic point, although I was also trying to pointing at that these
user groups got started b*ecause the vendors gave the sources to their
products out.*  We SHARED patches and features. DECUS started out the same
way.   For instance, many/most PDP-10 OS's used the DEC compilers and often
even found a way to run TOPS-10 binaries by emulating the UUOs.  The
IBM/360 world worked pretty much the same way.  My own experience was that
the compilers (e.g WATFIV-FTNG-ALGOLW-PL/1) and language interpreters
(APL-Snolbol) for the TSS and MTS had been 'ported' from the IBM-supplied
OS [my own first job was doing just that].

The same story was true for the PDP-8 with DOS-8/TSS-8 and the like. By the
time of the PDP-11, while some of the DEC source code was available (such
as the Fortran-IV for RT-11/RSX), since it took at PDP-10/BLISS to support
it, DEC had it its protection - so moving it/stealing it - would have been
harder.  By the time of the VAX, DEC was charging a lot of money of SW and
it was actually a revenue stream, so they keep a lot more locked up and
had started to do the same with PDP-10 world.

So, the available/unavailable source issue came when things started to get
closed up, which really started with the rise of the SW industry and making
revenue with the use of your SW.   OEMs and IVSs started to be a lot less
willing to reveal what they thought was their 'special sauce.'    Some/many
end-users started to balk.   RMS just took it to a new level - just look at
how he reacted to Symbolics being closed source :-)

The question that used to come up (and still does not an extent) is how are
the engineers and teams of people that developed the SW going to be
paid/renumerated for their work?   The RMS/GNU answer had been service
revenue [and living like a student in a rent-controlled APT in
Central Sq].  What has happened for most of the biggest FOSS projects, the
salaries are paid for firms like my own that pay developers to work on the
SW and most FOSS projects die when the developer/maintainer is unable to
continue (if not just gets bored).

In fact, [I can not say I personally know this - but have read internal
memos that make the claim], Intel pays for more Linux developers and now
LLVM developers than any firm.  What's interesting is that Intel does not
really directly sell its HW product to end-users.  We sell to others than
use our chips to make their products.   We have finally moved to the
support model for the compilers (I've personally been fighting that battle
for 15 years).

So back to my basic point ... while giving the *behavior* a name, the *idea
*of "Open Source" is really not anything new.  While it may be new in their
lifetime/experience, it is frankly at minimum a sad, if not outright
disingenuous, statement for the people to try to imply otherwise because
they are unwilling to look back into history and understand, much less
accept it as a fact.  Trying to rewrite history is just not pretty to
witness.  And I am pleased to see that a few folks (like Larry) that have
lived a little both times have tried to pass the torch with more complete
history.

Clem.


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