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@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members