Online Software Sharing
In a foreshadowing of the Internet "open source" revolution, software with source code included became available on BBS networks in the 1980s. This was sometimes a necessity; software written in BASIC and other interpreted languages could only be distributed as source code, and much of it was freeware. When people began gathering such source code, and setting up boards specifically to discuss its modification, this was a de facto open source system.
One of the most obvious examples of this is one of the most-used BBS systems and networks, WWIV, developed initially in BASIC by Wayne Bell. A culture of "modding" his software, and distributing the mods, grew up so extensively that when the software was ported to first Pascal, then C++, its source code continued to be distributed to registered users, who would share mods and compile their own versions of the software. This may have contributed to its being a dominant system and network, despite being outside the Fidonet umbrella that was shared by so many other BBS makers.
Meanwhile, the advent of Usenet and UUCPNet in the early 1980s further connected the programming community and provided a simpler way for programmers to share their software and contribute to software others had written.
Read more about this topic: History Of Free And Open-source Software
Famous quotes containing the word sharing:
“We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn’t just ours—it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can’t beat it.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)