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I understand your point but I think that would be stretching the definition of open source, which to me means that the text files used to write the program are

I understand your point but I think that would be stretching the definition of open source, which to me means that the text files used to write the program are available for anyone who want them. Just shipping a binary that happens to be very close to the language used to write that program wouldn't qualify as open source (and it would still be missing a lot of useful information, such as loop labels, memory location names, etc...).

infodroid 11y ago
The fact is there was little distribution of assembly source in the Amiga demo scene. So there is no way this can be called "open source" by the standards we recognize today. But the demo scene was anti-commercial in nature. The creators gave their demos away in good will. Nobody cared if their work was reused unless it was a blatant rip-off or was used for commercial gain. And disassembly was standard operating procedure to hack on the source code. So there was some sort of ethos at work, which seemed to arise naturally and spontaneously. And it reminds me of the open source spirit. > it would still be missing a lot of useful information, such as loop labels, memory location names, etc... I agree the disassembled code would be missing these things. But they are only conveniences for an assembly programmer. There is almost 1:1 correspondence between assembly code and machine code, which makes the task a lot easier than disassembling optimized C code for example. And on a practical level, the lack of labels and names doesn't stop you doing what you want with the code. For example the IDE used in the Scoopex tutorial above is ASM-One by TFA. But TFA are not the original author. ASM-One was a commercial product. And TFA added some very useful extensions despite not having the source code! I have used quite a few Amiga music trackers over the years. But they all descended from the disassembled code of Karsten Obarski's abandoned Ultimate Soundtracker [1]. The lack of assembly code was never a practical problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker

infodroid 11y ago

The fact is there was little distribution of assembly source in the Amiga demo scene. So there is no way this can be called "open source" by the standards we recognize today. But the demo scene was anti-commercial in nature. The creators gave their demos away in good will. Nobody cared if their work was reused unless it was a blatant rip-off or was used for commercial gain. And disassembly was standard operating procedure to hack on the source code. So there was some sort of ethos at work, which seemed to arise naturally and spontaneously. And it reminds me of the open source spirit. > it would still be missing a lot of useful information, such as loop labels, memory location names, etc... I agree the disassembled code would be missing these things. But they are only conveniences for an assembly programmer. There is almost 1:1 correspondence between assembly code and machine code, which makes the task a lot easier than disassembling optimized C code for example. And on a practical level, the lack of labels and names doesn't stop you doing what you want with the code. For example the IDE used in the Scoopex tutorial above is ASM-One by TFA. But TFA are not the original author. ASM-One was a commercial product. And TFA added some very useful extensions despite not having the source code! I have used quite a few Amiga music trackers over the years. But they all descended from the disassembled code of Karsten Obarski's abandoned Ultimate Soundtracker [1]. The lack of assembly code was never a practical problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker