From: Heinz Lycklama <heinz@osta.com>
To: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: history of community help for unix users everywhere
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2023 13:34:36 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1522ddce-f2cc-7639-a17c-d0f9b87ef395@osta.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfr67PnXV8gh0e60RKGJPbk_pcrwD260rDjbYmue9rQHcw@mail.gmail.com>
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The "open source" term may have been coined in 1998, but the term
"open systems" was in use well before in the mid to late 1980's when
we started the /usr/group and POSIX standards efforts. That was one
of the reasons why I named my high tech consultancy service with the
name "Open Systems Technology Associates" (OSTA) in 1992.
Heinz
On 2/8/2023 12:48 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 12:59 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
> For those of us outside of BTL, i.e. the Academic users, "Unix
> News" was created - which became ';login" - We started to meet
> informally at a few universities and talk to each other. Those
> of us on the ArpaNet that email/FTP and the like, started to share
> patches - but mostly things were shared when we got together via
> magtape. When they were held in NYC, we might be lucky and someone
> from Research might come (and even accidentally spill a few bits
> on the floor that mix fix something). Eventually, USENIX was
> formed, and we met twice a year formally. That was so popular,
> USENIX started having specialty conferences such as the one for C
> and C++, LISA, Networking, Linux and Free Software, etc.
> Similarly, with V7, UUCP was given to use a USENET was started by
> Tom Truscott and his famous "auto-dialler" that he hacked with a
> 12v relay, a DR-11C and described at the Bolder USENIX
> conference. Netnews was not far behind - which sadly became
> net.noise when the signal-to-noise ratio disappeared.
>
>
> Yea, reading both the early usenix news letters and the early AUUG
> newsletters carefully shows more community action as well. I'm not
> sure what netnews was like in the 74-79 time frame before UUCP was
> wisely available, so I can't comment on that, but there's reports from
> names you'd recognize, and reports about USENIX conferences, reports
> about local gatherings... and then all kinds of crazy stuff: letters
> on university letter head that had bug fixes in it for this or that
> problem... Addresses where you write and send photocopies of AT&T and
> DEC licenses and get FORTRAN or MARCO-11 or other such things where
> people had used their DEC source license to hack in unix I/O routines
> into the FORTRAN compiler. And there were all kinds of 'user shared'
> programs that ranged from 'trivial problem, poorly executed' to
> 'really cool DEC OS emulators' depending on the era.. The bas.s that
> is in V6 and V7 (V5 too?) is an early version fo DEC's BASIC that was
> hacked for unix and some I/O devices that were specific to the labs...
> there were also advice for what versions of unix to use, and what
> versions were available to license. References to things that you
> can't google for anymore (or if you do all you find is the google
> index of the login issues / auus issues). There's also a number of
> country SIGs under DECUS that were for unix in the 77 or so time frame
> that might be good to search newsletters for... bitsavers has a bunch,
> but not sure they are early enough (I didn't come across the
> references to them until long after I looked at what bitsavers had).
>
> The community aspect of open source was there in spades as well, with
> people helping other people and sharing fixes. But it was complicated
> by restrictive license agreements and somewhat (imho) overzealous
> protection of 'rights' at times that hampered things and would have
> echos in later open source licenses and attitudes that would develop
> in response. Even though the term 'open source' wasn't coined until
> 1998, the open source ethos were present in many of the early computer
> users groups, not least the unix ones. USENET amplified it, plus let
> in the unwashed masses who also had useful contributions (in addition
> to a lot of noise)... then things got really crowded with noise when
> AOL went live... And I'm sure there's a number of other BBS and/or
> compuserve communities I'm giving short-shrift here because I wasn't
> part of them in real time.
>
> Warner
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prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-02-08 21:35 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-02-08 18:58 [TUHS] " Will Senn
2023-02-08 19:39 ` [TUHS] " segaloco via TUHS
2023-02-08 19:56 ` Will Senn
2023-02-08 20:01 ` Henry Bent
2023-02-08 20:02 ` Clem Cole
2023-02-08 19:57 ` Clem Cole
2023-02-08 20:00 ` Clem Cole
2023-02-08 20:17 ` Henry Bent
2023-02-08 20:48 ` Warner Losh
2023-02-08 21:28 ` Dan Cross
2023-02-08 21:34 ` Heinz Lycklama [this message]
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