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 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