4 ms·

There was lots of closed-source public domain software in earlier eras. The ethos of most of the non-commercial software on the British micros, for example, was

by pmyteh 8y ago

There was lots of closed-source public domain software in earlier eras. The ethos of most of the non-commercial software on the British micros, for example, was never about the source. Stuff written in BASIC naturally came with its own sources, but even then people would often obfuscate it to avoid derivative works being made. People wanted reputation, not money, and they didn't want their work ripped off, or for others to profit off their labours. In the RISC OS community I was a part of, releasing source as a matter of course only became common with the influence of Linux. Before that, binary-only PD with homebrew or completely absent licensing was the norm.

kemitchell 8y ago
Your comment about obfuscated BASIC is very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Might you be able to mention any particularly important or memorable programs distributed that way? I'd be really interesting to go back and try to find contemporaneous writing about the motivations you mentioned.
- pmyteh 8y ago
  Not so much important or memorable: most of the really important stuff on RISC OS was small-scale commercial. There was also a tendency to use BASIC minifiers to make the program fractionally faster and somewhat smaller, so the boundaries with obfuscation weren't that clear. As for the contemporaneous writing, I'd start with the comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroup archive on Google Groups, because it's searchable (and I definitely remember this stuff being discussed in the late 90s, mainly as a reaction against the rise of Free Software. Incidentally, the decline of the RISC OS market really brought home to me the value of having sources available (and being allowed to use them). We had two significant breaking architectural changes (StrongARM architecture in 96 and the move from ARM's 26-bit to 32-bit addressing mode in the 00s) which cost us a lot of good software because the authors had moved on and nobody could fix the code.
  - kemitchell 8y ago
    > There was also a tendency to use BASIC minifiers to make the program fractionally faster and somewhat smaller, so the boundaries with obfuscation weren't that clear. Interesting! > comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroup archive Thanks! > Incidentally, the decline of the RISC OS market really brought home to me the value of having sources available (and being allowed to use them). I have a few of these stories, but now I have one more.
mntmn 8y ago
Same on the C64, on the Amiga (where sometimes stuff had sources but no license), and on MS-DOS. Coverdisks often had PD on them and there were PD collections like Fish and later PD CD-ROMs.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  Thank you so much for this comment. I've just added this page to my reading list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish

by pmyteh 8y ago

kemitchell 8y ago

Your comment about obfuscated BASIC is very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Might you be able to mention any particularly important or memorable programs distributed that way? I'd be really interesting to go back and try to find contemporaneous writing about the motivations you mentioned.

pmyteh 8y ago
Not so much important or memorable: most of the really important stuff on RISC OS was small-scale commercial. There was also a tendency to use BASIC minifiers to make the program fractionally faster and somewhat smaller, so the boundaries with obfuscation weren't that clear. As for the contemporaneous writing, I'd start with the comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroup archive on Google Groups, because it's searchable (and I definitely remember this stuff being discussed in the late 90s, mainly as a reaction against the rise of Free Software. Incidentally, the decline of the RISC OS market really brought home to me the value of having sources available (and being allowed to use them). We had two significant breaking architectural changes (StrongARM architecture in 96 and the move from ARM's 26-bit to 32-bit addressing mode in the 00s) which cost us a lot of good software because the authors had moved on and nobody could fix the code.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  > There was also a tendency to use BASIC minifiers to make the program fractionally faster and somewhat smaller, so the boundaries with obfuscation weren't that clear. Interesting! > comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroup archive Thanks! > Incidentally, the decline of the RISC OS market really brought home to me the value of having sources available (and being allowed to use them). I have a few of these stories, but now I have one more.

mntmn 8y ago

Same on the C64, on the Amiga (where sometimes stuff had sources but no license), and on MS-DOS. Coverdisks often had PD on them and there were PD collections like Fish and later PD CD-ROMs.

kemitchell 8y ago
Thank you so much for this comment. I've just added this page to my reading list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish