The document provides a brief history of open source software. It discusses early computers like the Commodore 64 from the 1980s and contrasts it with modern smartwatches. It also outlines the hacker ethics of free access to information and decentralization. Richard Stallman is quoted advocating for sharing software freely rather than restricting it. The presentation concludes with credits to images used.
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1.79 MHz 8-bit Processor
128K RAM
640x192 max resolution
64 color palette
RS-232 Serial Port
Cartridge Bay
2 Joystick Ports
Disk Extended Color Basic 2.1
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520 Mhz Apple S1
512MB RAM
390x312 resolution (~303 ppi density)
16 million colors
WatchOS
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1.79 MHz 8-bit Processor
128K RAM
640x192 max resolution
64 color palette
RS-232 Serial Port
Cartridge Bay
2 Joystick Ports
Disk Extended Color Basic 2.1
13. The Hacker Ethics
• Access to computers – and anything which might teach you
something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and
total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
• All information should be free
• Mistrust Authority – promote decentralization
• Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as
degrees, age, race, sex, or position
• You can create art and beauty on a computer
• Computers can change your life for the better
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“I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a
program I must share it with other people who like it.
Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer
them, making each user agree not to share with others. I
refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.
I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure
agreement or a software license agreement. For years I
worked within the Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such
tendencies and other inhospitalities, but eventually they
had gone too far:
I could not remain in an institution where such things are
done for me against my will.”
28. The Hacker Ethics
• Access to computers – and anything which might teach you
something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and
total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
• All information should be free
• Mistrust Authority – promote decentralization
• Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as
degrees, age, race, sex, or position
• You can create art and beauty on a computer
• Computers can change your life for the better
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29. Thank You!
• Co-Host of “Jerks Talk Games”
• http://jerkstalkgames.com
• Author of “Docker for Developers”
• https://leanpub.com/dockerfordevs
• http://ctankersley.com
• chris@ctankersley.com
• @dragonmantank
• @jerkstalkgames
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* ARPANet adopts the Internet Protocol, creating the internet
* Ada is standardized by the federal government
* Mutli-Tool Word, the precursor to MS Word, is released
Ultima III is released, one of the first RPG games to use turn-based combat
Sega Laserdisc hardware is released
The Famicom is released
The Apple IIe is released
The MSX is released
The Acorn Electron, a cut down BBC Micro, is released
TX-0, or “tix-oh”
Used transistors instead of vacuum tubes
64k of RAM
Cathode-ray tube display
Allowed users/developers to interact with programs WHILE THEY RAN
Loaned to MIT in 1958
The TX-0 amazed the early computer hackers at MIT. It didn’t use cards, and it wasn’t cloistered away like the hulking behemoth of a machine from IBM that most people at MIT programmed against. You typed your program onto a ribbon of thin paper, fed it into the console, and your program ran.
Most importantly the TX-0 was not nearly as guarded as the holy IBM 704. Most of the hackers were free to do what they wanted with the machine. There was one problem, and it was somewhat of a large on — the TX-0 had no software.
So the hackers at MIT created what they needed.
1958
AT&T lost an antitrust case, which results in them not being able to enter the computer business, and had to license their non-telephone technology to anyone who asked.
1976
Computers were moving into the homes, and things like the Homebrew Computer Club
Altair 8800
“All information should be free” reared it’s head when the tape containing Altair BASIC disappeared from a seminar put on by MITS at Rickey’s Hyatt House in Palo Alto, California. Why? Ed Roberts, the “father of the personal computer” and the founder of MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) had decided to not give the Altair BASIC software to customers for free and instead charged $200 for the ability to write software.
“All information should be free” reared it’s head when the tape containing Altair BASIC disappeared from a seminar put on by MITS at Rickey’s Hyatt House in Palo Alto, California. Why? Ed Roberts, the “father of the personal computer” and the founder of MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) had decided to not give the Altair BASIC software to customers for free and instead charged $200 for the ability to write software.
“An Open Letter to Hobbyists” – Feb 3, 1976
“To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books, and software itself. […] Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. […] The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however. 1) Most of these “users” never bought BASIC […]”
The 1970s also saw the development of the Unix operating system developed at AT&T by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others. Much like the original tools built by the hackers at MIT on the TX-0, Unix grew as it was licensed to other companies and universities.
Unix was alluring because it was portable, handled multiple users and multi-tasking. Standards help people develop software, and Unix became one of those standards. Before this was Multics for the GE-645 mainframe, but it was not without its faults.
The University of California in Berkeley was one of the most sought-after versions of the Unix code base, and started distributing their own variant of BSD in 1978, known as 1BSD, as an add-on to Version 6 Unix.
There was a hitch though. AT&T owned the copyright to the original Unix software. As time went on AT&T used software from projects outside of themselves, including the Computer Sciences Research Group from Berkeley.
Eventually AT&T was allowed to sell Unix, but their commercially available version of Unix was missing pieces that were showing up in the Berkeley variant, and BSD tapes contained AT&T code which meant users of BSD required a usage license from AT&T.
Its aim is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices, by collaboratively developing and providing software that is based on the following freedom rights: users are free to run the software, share it (copy, distribute), study it and modify it. GNU software guarantees these freedom-rights legally (via its license), and is therefore free software; the use of the word "free" always being taken to refer to freedom.
In 1971, near the end of his first year at Harvard, he became a programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived on began to fragment. Propreitary software was becoming the norm.