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Wrote their own COBOL and FORTRAN without a license as well. This took money away from IP holders, but gave birth to a lot of Microcomputers. What IP holders?

• orionblastar 10y ago
  You have to remember it was in the 1970s before free and open source software existed. Back then if you wanted to use C or UNIX you had to license it from Bell Labs. If you wanted BASIC you had to license it from Dartmouth, if you wanted COBOL you had to license it from The navy and Grace Hopper, etc. Over times things have changed and free and open source versions of those languages got written. But try to make a free and open source version of the Intel Mac BIOS, try to make a clone of MacOSX, try to make a version of XCode that runs in Linux and submits apps to the Apple App Store, etc. You need an Intel Mac for that and Apple's MacOSX and XCode. So not everything is free and open source or has an alternative to it. For example Microsoft made Windows that basically stole the Mac GUI IP without permission. Windows sold so well that Apple started to have financial problems. In that case it was taking money away from Apple.
  • slrz 10y ago
    In the case of FORTRAN, there already was a language standard as early as 1966. At the same time there existed implementations of it that were independent of IBM. Also, while you had to get a UNIX license from AT&T, they didn't make any money from it (well, they weren't allowed to) and at the time, it came with full sources. Yes, the term FOSS didn't exist yet but people shared source code anyway, at least in the academic/research environments where UNIX was popular. You're right in that things were much worse in the commercial office and home computer market.