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.
