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>At the time, it what somewhat novel to be able to get the source code at all Really? IIRC, in Jason Scott's excellent BBS documentary (you should go watch it.
by qwertyuiop924 10y ago
>At the time, it what somewhat novel to be able to get the source code at all
Really? IIRC, in Jason Scott's excellent BBS documentary (you should go watch it. Like, right now. It's that good), Thom Henderson (from SEA. Remember them? I don't, because I wasn't alive. Which is why I have to rely on documentaries) said that it was expected in UNIX circles, which is where Kermit originated.
Or were you on PC? I don't know, I wasn't alive.
- tyingq 10y agoFor commercial end users of SunOS, Ultrix, etc, most of what we used was closed source. Kermit was not the only software you could get source code for. However, the entire ecosystem was much smaller than what exists today. I'll concede it may have been different in more academic environments.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoshrugs Of course, in the early days of unix, you got the OS in source form, but those were long gone by then. AFAIK, a lot of independently developed utilities were distributed in source form, in part because it was common to have to edit the sources and compile yourself if you weren't on the exact same architecture as the author. But that's just what I've heard.
- rsync 10y ago"... Jason Scott's excellent BBS documentary (you should go watch it. Like, right now. It's that good)" Agreed. The BBS documentary is superb and really, really entertaining and engrossing. Especially the episode(s) on fidonet.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoI honestly found the compression and artscene episodes more interesting than fidonet. Although fidonet was good too.
- kqr2 10y agoLink to BBS documentary : https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary
- chiph 10y agoThanks. Many memories of acoustic-coupler time spent on Compuserve and local BBSes.