DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

[Walter Bright]

On 6/29/2013 5:08 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> 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.

True, distribution was mainly by physical mail. There was some via BBS's and 
Usenet, but these were severely limited by bandwidth.

I'd receive bug reports by fax, paper listings, and mailed floppies.