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I am 51 years old. I learned my first programming language (C) in the mid nineties, and have been writing software ever since. Back then, there was this enormo

I am 51 years old. I learned my first programming language (C) in the mid nineties, and have been writing software ever since. Back then, there was this enormous revolutionary fervor around free software, and it was intensely idealogical. You used the GPL because you wanted to fuck Microsoft and the entire concept of proprietary code. Linux was punk, not a good “solution.” And every time someone hacked up a free version of something, we all rejoiced, not because it “didn’t cost anything,” but because it was another way to make the point that the entire concept of making money off binary blobs was inherently evil. Install fests! Bring us that old 486, and we’ll make it YOURS! What a party. Were we hopelessly naive? Maybe. Probably. But I find it depressing to read threads like this. It’s like everybody is just doing some kind of cost benefit analysis, but nobody is asking serious questions about whether the world we built is actually the world we want. I’ll say it: If many of you had walked into some scrappy LUG in 1996, you’d have been laughed out of there as some kind of tool. Are you a tool? I don’t know. But the resignation still bums me out. Y’all want to “support OSS devs,” not throw a sledgehammer at the screen.

zxzax 5y ago
Just from my experience, building something purely out of spite is not a good long term strategy. All those companies ended up using a lot of open source because as it turns out, it is a good solution a lot of the time.
- sramsay 5y ago
  It wasn’t “spite,” first of all. But “a good long term strategy” for what, exactly?
  - zxzax 5y ago
    >because you wanted to fuck Microsoft and the entire concept of proprietary code I think I would describe that as spite. Is it not? By long term strategy I mean strategy for building things in general. Like, I get it, I don't particularly enjoy using certain Microsoft products either. But once you get that off your company's machines, then what? There has to be somewhere to go from there.
    - sramsay 5y ago
      We didn’t “hate” proprietary code (it often came off that way, I’ll admit). We did think it was morally wrong to make money off it. We thought it was like patenting the Pythagorean theorem. So really, you think “building things in general” required . . . what? Calm acceptance of restrictive licensing and software patents? Or maybe we should have been nicer about it? Again, it’s like “building things” must be properly done the way we currently do it. With lots of lawyers and lots of EULAs. This strikes me as a profoundly conservative position. How rude those Jacobins were! If only they were more polite. If only they had recognized that we live in the best of all possible worlds . . .
      - zxzax 5y ago
        In my experience, it's very easy to denounce something else as wrong, but it's a lot harder to actually put in the work to improve the situation and to demonstrate that things have actually improved. That's all I mean by building things. If you are an open source company, you still need lots of lawyers, lots of licenses and lots of contracts. You can't really avoid that, copyrights and patents are still an issue that everyone has to deal with, because these are still copyright/patent licenses after all. So maybe in some cases things are better but in other cases it seems that they aren't. For myself, I personally won't try to claim the high ground without the results to back it up.
        sramsay 5y ago
        My “results” are Postgres. And curl. And gcc. Etc., etc. Are you seriously arguing that we didn’t put our money where our mouth is?
        zxzax 5y ago
        No, not at all -- it sounded like you were saying the developers and users of such things were being naive, but maybe I'm mistaken. To give an example of what I was saying, if I was contributing to Postgres, it would be because I want to help make a good database and fix bugs. I wouldn't do it because I had a chip on my shoulder about Oracle, even if I did have that (I don't). But that's just me. OTOH I believe Oracle even offers some level of support for Postgres.
goodpoint 5y ago
> there was this enormous revolutionary fervor around free software I miss those times, and places like HN are far from it. Join mastodon if you want to breathe a similar atmosphere again. > Were we hopelessly naive? No, Linux won hands down. Also, a lot of people warned about the coopting of FOSS from software freedom into unpaid labor. We saw it coming and couldn't stop it.
- sramsay 5y ago
  As always, I wish there was a way to DM on HN. :)
- dmfb 5y ago
  Marxists would argue that naive is exactly what you were, and Marxists would reference history both to show you why and what you could have done about it. Liberalism and capitalism have always been loving bedfellows.
  - sramsay 5y ago
    No argument from me at all. Just a bit of sadness.
    - teknopaul 5y ago
      If you help granny cross the road, are you better off getting paid?
      - morelisp 5y ago
        Spare a dime for poor Larry and Sergey?
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Care to explain what should have been done? Also, what were people naive about?
    - 5y ago
klyrs 5y ago
I'm a little younger, but got into programming/OSS on a similar timeline. Notably, my dad bought the FUD about the evils of Linux so I wasn't allowed to attend a scrappy LUG in '96. To geezers like us, the elephant in the room is this article being hosted by m$. And honestly, I still can't fully trust that this isn't the Embrace phase of a long game. For the ultimate cognitive dissonance, I'd even work there because I like how they treat their employees. On the other hand... whose screen should we be throwing sledgehammers through? The internet enabled an absolute explosion of tech, but these days it's nearing impossible to live without a smartphone. Governments tacitly support Apple and Google's monopsony to distribute apps to access government services. Back when it was just nerds on the net, we controlled our digital lives. But today, the rug has been swept away and... the impact of our sledgehammer only isolates us from the non-nerd friends and family. And I'll say it... if I brought a modern phone to a LUG in '96 with Candy Crush on it, y'all wouldn't get anything done for a month. It's not just resignation. Contentedness is a problem too. So I support the OSS devs I can.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sangnoir 5y ago
> But I find it depressing to read threads like this. Me too - it's as if the entire scene has "sold out". I'm younger than you are, but I entered the Free Software(TM) scene as a zealot and a true believer - you probably had to back in the day because the overall software quality of the entire ecosystem wasn't close to parity to proprietary solutions (some parts of it were clearly superior, e.g. Apache vs. IIS). I think this high bar resulted in a self-selected group being involved in LUGs and similar groups. These days, the bar is much lower, thanks to Github and the large number of high-quality FOSS projects that are market leaders - far better than proprietary equivalents. My theory is that with this self-selecting filter gone, a lot of developers are now part of the community for self-serving reasons, so their attitude is ...mercenary. Its now all about "How does this project help me and make my life convenient as a developer" rather than "How does this project help software users like me": it's a subtle difference, but with far-reaching consequences. I don't think we were naive - we thought we had won when corporations defected, but our victory was subverted and it feels more and more like most corporations are a fifth column. "Open Source Software" is slowly suffocating "Free Software".
- zxzax 5y ago
  >Its now all about "How does this project help me and make my life convenient as a developer" rather than "How does this project help software users like me" I don't think this is a new thing, or something that is necessarily correlated. I've seen plenty of old open source projects that are totally obtuse and obscure to everyone but the developer -- having that attitude is not mutually exclusive with being a FOSS enthusiast. Probably more people are developing this stuff for money now, but that's a different thing from the "selling out" you were talking about. Github didn't change much here if you ask me, in the old days it was Sourceforge, and you can still find a lot of those obscure projects still hosted there.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > I don't think this is a new thing, or something that is necessarily correlated. Agreed - it's not new, but its certainly related as it is at the root of the philosophical differences between BSD-style licenses and GPL, and the respective licenses popularity over time support my thesis. Not only are more people developing stuff for money, there are fewer who are developing it to scratch an itch and giving it to the world for free. For a large number of people (too large, if you ask me), the process is now: 1. Author popular open source project 2. ??? 3. Profit Free software used to be a way to avoid exploitation, now developers (and corporations!) are tripping over themselves to exploit the popularity of their FOSS projects - that's what feels like "selling out", because money/control is the goal now. > Github didn't change much here if you ask me, in the old days it was Sourceforge, and you can still find a lot of those obscure projects still hosted there. Git, Github and turn-key CI lowered the bar by a lot! Forking an existing project or getting a new one off the ground is much easier now, which is a blessing and a curse - but mostly a blessing. Building and packaging software by hand (ok, using Makefiles) would filter out all, but the very committed - and that was what you had to do in the Sourceforge era. I didn't say it was impossible in the past, only that the technical (and commitment) bars were much higher
flohofwoe 5y ago
Important to note that there always also was a more pragmatical side of "free" software in the 90's, it just wasn't called that way, but "Public Domain" (and the more commercial stuff "Shareware"). At least on the Amiga (where I spent most of the early 90's), public domain and shareware was massive.
- npteljes 5y ago
  And there's always Open Source.
throwaway894345 5y ago
> the entire concept of making money off binary blobs was inherently evil I feel like all of this is trying to escape economic realities that someone has to do the work to make those binary blobs and that person deserves some sort of compensation. There's a line somewhere between supporting Bill Gates and supporting rank and file developers, and I don't purport to know where that line is, but I don't understand how "all software should be freely written by volunteers" is sustainable. Perhaps that's not the position advocated?

zxzax 5y ago

Just from my experience, building something purely out of spite is not a good long term strategy. All those companies ended up using a lot of open source because as it turns out, it is a good solution a lot of the time.

sramsay 5y ago
It wasn’t “spite,” first of all. But “a good long term strategy” for what, exactly?
- zxzax 5y ago
  >because you wanted to fuck Microsoft and the entire concept of proprietary code I think I would describe that as spite. Is it not? By long term strategy I mean strategy for building things in general. Like, I get it, I don't particularly enjoy using certain Microsoft products either. But once you get that off your company's machines, then what? There has to be somewhere to go from there.
  - sramsay 5y ago
    We didn’t “hate” proprietary code (it often came off that way, I’ll admit). We did think it was morally wrong to make money off it. We thought it was like patenting the Pythagorean theorem. So really, you think “building things in general” required . . . what? Calm acceptance of restrictive licensing and software patents? Or maybe we should have been nicer about it? Again, it’s like “building things” must be properly done the way we currently do it. With lots of lawyers and lots of EULAs. This strikes me as a profoundly conservative position. How rude those Jacobins were! If only they were more polite. If only they had recognized that we live in the best of all possible worlds . . .
    - zxzax 5y ago
      In my experience, it's very easy to denounce something else as wrong, but it's a lot harder to actually put in the work to improve the situation and to demonstrate that things have actually improved. That's all I mean by building things. If you are an open source company, you still need lots of lawyers, lots of licenses and lots of contracts. You can't really avoid that, copyrights and patents are still an issue that everyone has to deal with, because these are still copyright/patent licenses after all. So maybe in some cases things are better but in other cases it seems that they aren't. For myself, I personally won't try to claim the high ground without the results to back it up.
      - sramsay 5y ago
        My “results” are Postgres. And curl. And gcc. Etc., etc. Are you seriously arguing that we didn’t put our money where our mouth is?
        zxzax 5y ago
        No, not at all -- it sounded like you were saying the developers and users of such things were being naive, but maybe I'm mistaken. To give an example of what I was saying, if I was contributing to Postgres, it would be because I want to help make a good database and fix bugs. I wouldn't do it because I had a chip on my shoulder about Oracle, even if I did have that (I don't). But that's just me. OTOH I believe Oracle even offers some level of support for Postgres.

goodpoint 5y ago

> there was this enormous revolutionary fervor around free software I miss those times, and places like HN are far from it. Join mastodon if you want to breathe a similar atmosphere again. > Were we hopelessly naive? No, Linux won hands down. Also, a lot of people warned about the coopting of FOSS from software freedom into unpaid labor. We saw it coming and couldn't stop it.

sramsay 5y ago
As always, I wish there was a way to DM on HN. :)
dmfb 5y ago
Marxists would argue that naive is exactly what you were, and Marxists would reference history both to show you why and what you could have done about it. Liberalism and capitalism have always been loving bedfellows.
- sramsay 5y ago
  No argument from me at all. Just a bit of sadness.
  - teknopaul 5y ago
    If you help granny cross the road, are you better off getting paid?
    - morelisp 5y ago
      Spare a dime for poor Larry and Sergey?
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Care to explain what should have been done? Also, what were people naive about?
  - 5y ago

klyrs 5y ago

I'm a little younger, but got into programming/OSS on a similar timeline. Notably, my dad bought the FUD about the evils of Linux so I wasn't allowed to attend a scrappy LUG in '96. To geezers like us, the elephant in the room is this article being hosted by m$. And honestly, I still can't fully trust that this isn't the Embrace phase of a long game. For the ultimate cognitive dissonance, I'd even work there because I like how they treat their employees. On the other hand... whose screen should we be throwing sledgehammers through? The internet enabled an absolute explosion of tech, but these days it's nearing impossible to live without a smartphone. Governments tacitly support Apple and Google's monopsony to distribute apps to access government services. Back when it was just nerds on the net, we controlled our digital lives. But today, the rug has been swept away and... the impact of our sledgehammer only isolates us from the non-nerd friends and family. And I'll say it... if I brought a modern phone to a LUG in '96 with Candy Crush on it, y'all wouldn't get anything done for a month. It's not just resignation. Contentedness is a problem too. So I support the OSS devs I can.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sangnoir 5y ago

> But I find it depressing to read threads like this. Me too - it's as if the entire scene has "sold out". I'm younger than you are, but I entered the Free Software(TM) scene as a zealot and a true believer - you probably had to back in the day because the overall software quality of the entire ecosystem wasn't close to parity to proprietary solutions (some parts of it were clearly superior, e.g. Apache vs. IIS). I think this high bar resulted in a self-selected group being involved in LUGs and similar groups. These days, the bar is much lower, thanks to Github and the large number of high-quality FOSS projects that are market leaders - far better than proprietary equivalents. My theory is that with this self-selecting filter gone, a lot of developers are now part of the community for self-serving reasons, so their attitude is ...mercenary. Its now all about "How does this project help me and make my life convenient as a developer" rather than "How does this project help software users like me": it's a subtle difference, but with far-reaching consequences. I don't think we were naive - we thought we had won when corporations defected, but our victory was subverted and it feels more and more like most corporations are a fifth column. "Open Source Software" is slowly suffocating "Free Software".

zxzax 5y ago
>Its now all about "How does this project help me and make my life convenient as a developer" rather than "How does this project help software users like me" I don't think this is a new thing, or something that is necessarily correlated. I've seen plenty of old open source projects that are totally obtuse and obscure to everyone but the developer -- having that attitude is not mutually exclusive with being a FOSS enthusiast. Probably more people are developing this stuff for money now, but that's a different thing from the "selling out" you were talking about. Github didn't change much here if you ask me, in the old days it was Sourceforge, and you can still find a lot of those obscure projects still hosted there.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > I don't think this is a new thing, or something that is necessarily correlated. Agreed - it's not new, but its certainly related as it is at the root of the philosophical differences between BSD-style licenses and GPL, and the respective licenses popularity over time support my thesis. Not only are more people developing stuff for money, there are fewer who are developing it to scratch an itch and giving it to the world for free. For a large number of people (too large, if you ask me), the process is now: 1. Author popular open source project 2. ??? 3. Profit Free software used to be a way to avoid exploitation, now developers (and corporations!) are tripping over themselves to exploit the popularity of their FOSS projects - that's what feels like "selling out", because money/control is the goal now. > Github didn't change much here if you ask me, in the old days it was Sourceforge, and you can still find a lot of those obscure projects still hosted there. Git, Github and turn-key CI lowered the bar by a lot! Forking an existing project or getting a new one off the ground is much easier now, which is a blessing and a curse - but mostly a blessing. Building and packaging software by hand (ok, using Makefiles) would filter out all, but the very committed - and that was what you had to do in the Sourceforge era. I didn't say it was impossible in the past, only that the technical (and commitment) bars were much higher

flohofwoe 5y ago

Important to note that there always also was a more pragmatical side of "free" software in the 90's, it just wasn't called that way, but "Public Domain" (and the more commercial stuff "Shareware"). At least on the Amiga (where I spent most of the early 90's), public domain and shareware was massive.

npteljes 5y ago
And there's always Open Source.

throwaway894345 5y ago

> the entire concept of making money off binary blobs was inherently evil I feel like all of this is trying to escape economic realities that someone has to do the work to make those binary blobs and that person deserves some sort of compensation. There's a line somewhere between supporting Bill Gates and supporting rank and file developers, and I don't purport to know where that line is, but I don't understand how "all software should be freely written by volunteers" is sustainable. Perhaps that's not the position advocated?