[SIGCIS-Members] History of open-source

[Thomas Haigh]

A late reply to the question on open source:

I have had the early history of open source (1950s-1970s) as a research
interest for a while, though always as a background task rather than as my
main project so it's still not published. This grew out of my work with SIAM
on the history of mathematical software packages. Currently I'm working with
my wife Maria to finish up a joint draft article on the topic. It's not
ready to post yet, but I presented this work in a number of venues,
including SHOT in 2007 in a rather compressed form. Slides at
http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/Slides/SHOT2007OpenSource.pdf.

There's a longer format version of the talk from a symposium appearance at
UIUC: http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/Slides/OpenSourceUIUC.pdf. They
also recorded the audio:
http://waterfall.lis.uiuc.edu/dl/classes/auditorium/haighnov28_07_1.ram. The
introduction is a little muffled, but you should be able to hear me.

The final version will line up nicely with Atushi Akera's influential
article on SHARE, as picked up by Kelty, but extend further in time, get
deeper into the materiality of the program library, specific practices, etc.
and look beyond the SHARE Operating System project to the exchange of
mathematical routines and attempts to improve their quality. While core OS
work was ceded to IBM early on, open source remained important in other
areas much longer.

There's also a little coverage of SHARE's work on file management and report
generation tools (precursors of the DBMS) during the 1950s in my recent
article "How Data Got its Base: Information Storage Software in the 1950s
and 60s,"  IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31:4 (Oct-Dec 2009):6-25.
That's at
http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/HowThe%20DataGotItsBase.pdf. 

Tom Haigh
www.tomandmaria.com/tom    

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of Pierre Mounier
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 12:11 PM
To: sigcis
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] History of open-source

In this regard, I happen to be writing a paper on computer user groups  
in France (of which one of the most active was... SHARE). From the  
first interviews I conducted and from the few meeting reports I have  
from the early 1960s, it appears that software sharing was short- 
lived. It rather took this form : A good program written by a user was  
adopted by the manufacturer, and became part of its commercial  
catalogue. At the meetings, users  mostly presented programming  
methods, sometimes numerical analysis solutions, rarely software  
stricto sensu. A major topic emerged : suggesting improvements to the  
manufacturer's products.

Best,
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn


Le 27 août 10 à 15:59, Joel West a écrit :

> My understanding is that Evan is most interested in the historical  
> antecedents to the well-known aspects of free software and open  
> source software movements -- thinks like SHARE, DECUS and other  
> software sharing in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
>
> -- 
> Joel West, Ph.D.          http://www.JoelWest.org/Research
> Professor, Innovation & Entrepreneurship
> College of Business, San Jose State University
> BT 555, One Washington Square, San Jose, CA 95192-0070
> _______________________________________________
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