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Similarly, software should automatically be open-source after 30 years. The more I grow old, the more I consider that OSS is the 8th marvel of the world. Milli

Similarly, software should automatically be open-source after 30 years. The more I grow old, the more I consider that OSS is the 8th marvel of the world. Millions of humans worked independently and created the hugest building of our civilization: Linux/Postgres/MySQL/Wordpress/Audacity/OBS/drivers/Nginx/Owasp/NPM/React/Angular, a stepping stone that powers everything and has even already taken off from Mars (Perseverance’s helicopter).

scoopertrooper 4y ago
I'm now trying to imagine a Mars helicopter solution that encompassed all those technologies in the stack. I could imagine the company I work for coming up with such a solution.
wrycoder 4y ago
Lisp, gcc, gdb, pearl, python, apache, mozilla, git, etc.
tyingq 4y ago
>Similarly, software should automatically be open-source after 30 years. I'm not sure how well this might work. It's currently easier for me to resurrect an old Z80 ASM program than to get a node.js V6 program working. Our complicated dependency chains will make future-retro hard.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I had a similar experience trying to resurrect an old RoR project from the early 2010s. Maybe technically possible, but not the least bit practical… it’d be better to just start from scratch. Meanwhile, I was able to get an early 2000s mac Cocoa project building and running again in just a few hours, with the bulk of the work going into fixing deprecations. The main difference between the two was the number of third party dependencies… the Cocoa app had almost none while the RoR project had several tens when counting sub-dependencies.
earthscienceman 4y ago
Absolutely. And yet the intellectual/philosophical underpinnings of that marvel are often demeaned, or neglected, even here on HN. The fact that the average person has no awareness that the software powering the vast majority of their technology was built for free and that they can own it is mind boggling. They're just told that the prisons they think are "computing" (Windows/Apple/Android) are the natural state of things. Stallman is a (rightfully) controversial figure, but the Free Software movement is one of the most important movements of our age.
- rglullis 4y ago
  As a strong FOSS supporter, I'd like to disabuse you of the notion that it was built for free. It was not built for free. Saying that it was free cheapens the work of all the people involved in a project and gives the impression to end-users that open source is only a cheap knock-off of proprietary solutions.
  - spockz 4y ago
    Okay. So it was built freely, or given/contributed for free. I don’t share this notion that free equals cheap.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      Sorry for bring pedantic, but it is still not the best way to frame it. I worked in open source projects for about half of my professional life, and I wouldn't be able to do so "for free". I also make a point of supporting FOSS development as much as possible, and I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software. Free software is amazing and infinitely more valuable than closed source solutions, and we should never take it for granted or think that we are entitled for the time and effort of FOSS developers.
      - jsjohnst 4y ago
        > I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software Sorry for being pedantic, but this is quite literally impossible, unless you’ve never bought a single piece of electronics.
ufmace 4y ago
You're right about our existing OSS ecosystem being a marvel. I'm doubtful though about the merits of requiring software to be open-sourced after some timeframe though. IME, much proprietary software has very complex build and deployment pipelines and dependency chains and is very difficult to do anything with if you don't have a lot of specialized knowledge. I think it's rare for OSS projects to be successful without substantial effort spent on getting the dev and build systems to be workable for any random person on the internet. So who's gonna do the work to get these 30 year old projects usable?
- idle_zealot 4y ago
  > So who's gonna do the work to get these 30 year old projects usable? The projects themselves don’t need to be usable for the source to be valuable. I could easily imagine the source code of say a defunct MMO server being a useful reference for enthusiasts re-implementing their own servers.
JasonFruit 4y ago
That would require people who in many cases don't care about the software to retain the source for thirty years, which would be burdensome.
pietro72ohboy 4y ago
And the GNU project. Let’s not forget their contribution to this story!
squarefoot 4y ago
> Similarly, software should automatically be open-source after 30 years. 30 years seems a lot to me. I would rather force by law companies to open source every piece of firmware after some time (2-5 years?) it is declared obsolete or doesn't receive direct support anymore. The goal should be rather to prevent perfectly good hardware to become bricks and be thrown away than to help retrocomputing enthusiasts revive the few surviving devices decades later. I understand there would be huge legal implications but still...
yourapostasy 4y ago
> The more I grow old, the more I consider that OSS is the 8th marvel of the world. In the far future, I would not at all be surprised that Open Source becomes the only way historians know in precise detail how software evolved in the past. There will only be vague descriptions of commercial software, possibly some names and near-apocryphal stories, but no source code so no way to know for sure.

scoopertrooper 4y ago

I'm now trying to imagine a Mars helicopter solution that encompassed all those technologies in the stack. I could imagine the company I work for coming up with such a solution.

wrycoder 4y ago

Lisp, gcc, gdb, pearl, python, apache, mozilla, git, etc.

tyingq 4y ago

>Similarly, software should automatically be open-source after 30 years. I'm not sure how well this might work. It's currently easier for me to resurrect an old Z80 ASM program than to get a node.js V6 program working. Our complicated dependency chains will make future-retro hard.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
I had a similar experience trying to resurrect an old RoR project from the early 2010s. Maybe technically possible, but not the least bit practical… it’d be better to just start from scratch. Meanwhile, I was able to get an early 2000s mac Cocoa project building and running again in just a few hours, with the bulk of the work going into fixing deprecations. The main difference between the two was the number of third party dependencies… the Cocoa app had almost none while the RoR project had several tens when counting sub-dependencies.

earthscienceman 4y ago

Absolutely. And yet the intellectual/philosophical underpinnings of that marvel are often demeaned, or neglected, even here on HN. The fact that the average person has no awareness that the software powering the vast majority of their technology was built for free and that they can own it is mind boggling. They're just told that the prisons they think are "computing" (Windows/Apple/Android) are the natural state of things. Stallman is a (rightfully) controversial figure, but the Free Software movement is one of the most important movements of our age.

rglullis 4y ago
As a strong FOSS supporter, I'd like to disabuse you of the notion that it was built for free. It was not built for free. Saying that it was free cheapens the work of all the people involved in a project and gives the impression to end-users that open source is only a cheap knock-off of proprietary solutions.
- spockz 4y ago
  Okay. So it was built freely, or given/contributed for free. I don’t share this notion that free equals cheap.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Sorry for bring pedantic, but it is still not the best way to frame it. I worked in open source projects for about half of my professional life, and I wouldn't be able to do so "for free". I also make a point of supporting FOSS development as much as possible, and I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software. Free software is amazing and infinitely more valuable than closed source solutions, and we should never take it for granted or think that we are entitled for the time and effort of FOSS developers.
    - jsjohnst 4y ago
      > I have not ever paid a dime for proprietary software Sorry for being pedantic, but this is quite literally impossible, unless you’ve never bought a single piece of electronics.

ufmace 4y ago

You're right about our existing OSS ecosystem being a marvel. I'm doubtful though about the merits of requiring software to be open-sourced after some timeframe though. IME, much proprietary software has very complex build and deployment pipelines and dependency chains and is very difficult to do anything with if you don't have a lot of specialized knowledge. I think it's rare for OSS projects to be successful without substantial effort spent on getting the dev and build systems to be workable for any random person on the internet. So who's gonna do the work to get these 30 year old projects usable?

idle_zealot 4y ago
> So who's gonna do the work to get these 30 year old projects usable? The projects themselves don’t need to be usable for the source to be valuable. I could easily imagine the source code of say a defunct MMO server being a useful reference for enthusiasts re-implementing their own servers.

JasonFruit 4y ago

That would require people who in many cases don't care about the software to retain the source for thirty years, which would be burdensome.

pietro72ohboy 4y ago

And the GNU project. Let’s not forget their contribution to this story!

squarefoot 4y ago

> Similarly, software should automatically be open-source after 30 years. 30 years seems a lot to me. I would rather force by law companies to open source every piece of firmware after some time (2-5 years?) it is declared obsolete or doesn't receive direct support anymore. The goal should be rather to prevent perfectly good hardware to become bricks and be thrown away than to help retrocomputing enthusiasts revive the few surviving devices decades later. I understand there would be huge legal implications but still...

yourapostasy 4y ago

> The more I grow old, the more I consider that OSS is the 8th marvel of the world. In the far future, I would not at all be surprised that Open Source becomes the only way historians know in precise detail how software evolved in the past. There will only be vague descriptions of commercial software, possibly some names and near-apocryphal stories, but no source code so no way to know for sure.