DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

Joseph Rushton Wakeling joseph.wakeling at webdrake.net
Sat Jun 29 05:08:45 PDT 2013


On Saturday, 29 June 2013 at 08:37:48 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> The bottom line was the open source movement was not a very 
> significant force in the 1980's when C++ gained traction. Open 
> source really exploded around 2000, along with the internet. I 
> wonder if open source perhaps needed the internet in order to 
> be viable.

That's a very good point.  It's before my time really, but if I 
understand the history right, the main way to get hold of copies 
of stuff like GCC in the early days was to pay for a set of disks 
with it on -- and there was no infrastructure for easily sharing 
changes.  So neither the free-as-in-beer or free-as-in-freedom 
advantages were as readily apparent or effective as they are 
today.


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