Andy et al.,

In the late 1970s, Ken Bowles and students at UC San Diego produced UCSD Pascal, which was largely an attempt to escape from the strictures of mainframe computing.

There are a lot of good web sites out there on this and I had an informal piece in IEEE Spectrum featuring Bowles and UCSD Pascal.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/javas-forgotten-forbear/0

The emphasis is on this system as a forebear of the Java virtual machine, but also mentioned is Bowles's push to free computer users from the centralized computing world, partly because his own research had been cast adrift when UCSD dumped Burroughs machines for IBM.

Bowles, who was a big user of programmed instruction in his own teaching, envisioned a kind of marketplace for educational and other software through which people would distribute their (soft)wares.

UCSD Pascal, BTW, likely embodies the first use of such features as drop-down menus and had a large influence on Apple, which distributed UCSD Pascal as Apple Pascal.  Apple employed many of Bowles's students.

I presented on this at SHOT and have an unpublished paper if anyone is interested.

- Bill


On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 10:49 AM, Andrew Russell <arussell@stevens.edu> wrote:
Hello everyone - 

This question (via Dave Farber's list) seemed like a good one for SIGCIS members to think about.  My first thought is that answers would depend on one's definition of each of the operative terms (campaign, computer, user, freedom) :-)

Andy

PS you might cc Stallman and Farber on any responses that have examples of earlier 'campaigns.'


Begin forwarded message:



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Richard Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
Date: Aug 4, 2012 1:43 AM
Subject: When was first campaign for computer users' freedom
To: <dave@farber.net>

The free software movement, a campaign for computer users' freedom,
started in 1983.

Do you know of any other campaigns for computer users' freedom prior
to that?  I don't mean the same specific issue (free vs proprietary
software), I mean any issue of freedom from unjust power, specifically
in regard to computer users or computer use.

The reason I'm asking is that the free software movement might have
been the first such campaign, but I can't sure yet.

--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/
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