I get caught up in a lot of nostalgia at times, and enjoy filling in some gaps in my memories with more knowledge of what happened in that era. Due to certain circumstances in my childhood, I was exposed to a lot of IBM PC specific computing. I ended up via hand me down equipment experiencing MS-DOS and 8088, 286, 386, and 486 computing before catching up to what was modern then. Along the way I learned about DR-DOS and other OS choices, 4DOS as a command.com replacement, etc. This lead to some wandering into OS/2 and BeOS in the 90s. I however didn't have hands on experience with the big UNIX names of that era till later, nor was I even aware of some of the computing landscape at the time.

One of the things that intrigued me about UNIX in particular was how there were many variants of it released by many companies for different purposes, while still maintaining some compatibility with each other. I later learned this was partially due to a lot of standards like POSIX, with the rest being that UNIX has seen many forks since it's creation at Bell Labs.

That sharing between systems is what introduced me to the idea of open source. And in an era when Microsoft's illegal use of it's monopoly power started directly impacting my career, I also saw a rising champion of the open source movement making some big strides.

Ever since a particular moment in the late 90s realizing how much more computer history there was to explore, I started digging. My job led me to work at some fantastic places to help enable this, including working at a place that had every system DEC shipped up and running somewhere. Part of that digging was tracing both standards like POSIX and open source movements. And parts were talking to the older workers who experienced the past as it happened.

I am seeing the value of open source more and more as my career progresses, and more then just open source, the open sharing of ideas and ways to solve problems. It seems this open sharing was fundamental to the spread of UNIX even when much of it wasn't open source.

Where I'm at these days is learning more about the relationships between the big computer companies of the time and how this helped push things forward in areas. Sun seems foundational to so much, as does DEC to me.


Okay, so background aside, there was a longstanding claim made by Apple on their open source landing page that they were the first major computer company to embrace open source software key to their development. It's since been changed as a result of backlash when Swift went open source, however what was never answered in my mind was who was the first? I get that the claim was grandiose and likely untrue, but it was disheartening to see the level of trolling and rage that was released as a result of people seeing it. In trying to trace their claim, I came across information about GCC being critical to NextSTEP, and I'm slowly reading some old newsgroups to learn more about that situation. NextSTEP intrigues me for so many reasons, and it's a company I wish I had paid attention to in the era before Apple bought them. Their name and work did come up when researching the open connections between companies, such as the efforts around OpenSTEP, and the connections to GNU project.

What other (pre Linux) moves were being made in open source or general open sharing that you are aware of in the PC era? I see the PC era as starting in the hobby realm in the 70s, and solidifying more in the 80s before the Microsoft 90s monopoly days. Linux has the benefit of being created and existing mostly in the more modern internet era leading to a well documented history. What is harder to dig into is the ties that existed before then.

I had a similar post prior to the holidays that I removed prior to my trip home. I'd like to foster some fun nostalgic discussion of tech here, and felt the first response last time was going against that spirit. I'm not going to moderate or admin duties this time, as I feel this community still can have healthy discussions overall even with the shrinking user base.

Corel Computer (eg. Corel Draw!, Wordperfect, ..) was large when it got into open source computing. Just a shadow of its former self now.

IBM has been very big on Linux and OSS for quite some time now too.

The three or four most obviously influential pre-Linux open source projects are:

- MIT's X Window System
- CMU's Mach (and Andrew filesystem)
- BSD Unix
- The FSF's GNU project (gcc, gdb, emacs, etc.)

There's the whole digression about BSD vs. AT&T that's wildly not interesting to your question, but broadly those are the three big things that really had a huge impact. Dig deeper and there are plenty of smaller but still quite influential systems (e.g., the Glasgow Haskell Compiler got its start in 1989), but what's certainly striking is the seemingly central role of academia in jumpstarting open source.

It makes sense that academia had a central role in jump starting it. If something gives a for-profit company a competitive advantage, there is no way they are going to willingly share that with the competition and erode that advantage.

Tom,

There are some nice, tasteful diagrams that trace the history of UNIX like this from Computerworld:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2524660/operating-systems/the-unix-family-tree.html

But they are woefully incomplete, leaving out variants that even I worked with like Digital UNIX and DG-UX.

To get a fuller picture, you need to down some ibuprofen, slap on that left-over scopolamine patch from that sailing vacation, and check this out:

http://www.levenez.com/unix/

BSD == Dapper Dan? System V == Fop? I just can't guess with any confidence.

Jim

Let's not talk about OS/2.

I vaguely remember trying out Corel Linux at some point during the Windows Refund protest era. I had forgotten about Corel buying Wordperfect and being a part of the OpenDocument formats that eventually forced Microsoft Office to adopt a more open format.