Section 9.2. Freemacs and Open Source


9.2. Freemacs and Open Source

After I returned to graduate school, I started writing a programmable editor for MS-DOS. Instead of writing it de novo, I thought it should be compatible with Emacs. I had used Emacs while working at Hewlett-Packard, where I had done some hacking on an editor. That experience convinced me I wanted an editor without any distinction between editing and typing. I purchased a copy of the MIT AI Lab memo describing Emacs, written by Richard M. Stallman (RMS). I recognized his name because of his GNU Manifesto, a new document then. I sent email to RMS to get permission to sell a copy of the memo along with my editor. The document was in the public domain, but I thought that asking permission was only polite.

I got a call from RMS (this was back when his wrists hurt so badly that he couldn't type). He persuaded me to give away my version of Emacs rather than sell it. He appealed to my sense of fairness. He asked why I should profit from a manual that I had not written. I was impressed that so stellar a personage as RMS would take the time to call me. I decided that it would be best to give it away. I didn't really have any idea whom I might sell it to. All my previous software sales had been for the RadioShack Color Computer, and had been sold to CoCo Magazine. My editor was for MS-DOS, so this was a completely new situation for me. Once I decided to give it away, I gave it the catchy name Freemacs.

In graduate school, I had access to worldwide networks, and it was actually possible to distribute software "for free." Nobody was kidding themselves; the Department of Defense was paying the bills for the ARPANET, universities for BITNET, and companies for CSNet. Nothing was free to the institution, but the users perceived the networks to have no incremental cost. This led to allocation by congestion, but I'm not talking about economics yet. Regardless, a software author could give away software for the mere cost of uploading it to a distribution point.

Freemacs was distributed from SIMTEL-20.ARPA, an FTP site with copies of most useful MS-DOS software. It was run by the Army at the White Sands Missile Base, but nobody cared about where it was physically. The point was that they had good stuff, and they were sharing it. This made me a contributing member of the open source community.



Open Sources 2.0
Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution
ISBN: 0596008023
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 217

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