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1. trelan+(OP)[view] [source] 2023-12-27 18:50:04
I think open source came first, though it wasn't thought of as such at the time. Sharing the source was just what some folks did. A company locking down the source to a printer was one if the reasons Stallmann decided to make the GPL.

"I noticed this because I had the good fortune in the 1970's to be part of a community of programmers who shared software. Now, this community could trace its ancestry essentially back to the beginning of computing."

[...]

"And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software [for the broken printer]. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, "Hi, I'm from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?" And he said "No, I promised not to give you a copy." [Laughter] I was stunned. I was so -- I was angry, and I had no idea how I could do justice to it. All I could think of was to turn around on my heel and walk out of his room. Maybe I slammed the door. [Laughter] And I thought about it later on, because I realized that I was seeing not just an isolated jerk, but a social phenomenon that was important and affected a lot of people."

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt

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