Way way back, in the mists of computation history, computers were mostly female. They were women who computed. A little later, machines got the job. Because they also computed, we called them computers, too. And when we started doing that, computers used punch cards or were hard-wired for specific tasks. They had physical switches and vacuum tubes giving out instructions. Then, it was magnetic tapes, hard drives, optical disks.
Around the middle of the twentieth century, we started using software to program our computers. Except it wasn't really a ware. Mostly, computers were bought by large institutions, universities and research centres. People who needed to do very serious calculations bought computers. The programs weren't thought of as something worth selling. They were specific things that the people who owned computers wrote for themselves. They might have someone on staff to write programs for the computer, or they might hire someone in to do it. Either way, the great big computers were expensive and the little programs were not. So the programs didn't matter much. But they were useful, so people traded them. And if I gave you my program, you could change it, too. Because you could see how I'd told my computer what to do.
Eventually, computers got a little cheaper. And when computers got cheaper, more people started buying them. Not just big institutions with buildings full of researchers, but people more like you and me. These computers came with some programs. But getting more programs was a little tougher. One person doesn't have the money to hire a programmer to write programs. I could write one myself, which is what a lot of people did, but then again, I might not have a lot of time on my hands to do that. So a new option sprang up. Someone would invest some time into writing a program that they thought would be useful to lots of people. Then, they'd sell that program to as many people as they could. That's how software became something you could buy.
This, of course, didn't stop people from wanting to keep on doing what they had been doing, which was copying and sharing. Needless to say, the people who were selling programs didn't like this trading very much. There was one young man who was particularly bothered by it. He'd written a program that had turned out to be quite popular. He was bothered that lots of people, instead of buying it from him, got it the way they always had before, by trading with their friends. He didn't like this one bit. So he wrote an angry letter to a computer hobbyist magazine, making his case to the traders.
A couple years after that one young man wrote his letter, another man was having a problem. This was a problem born of a distinction. Programs are made of code. There are two types of code: source code, which is the stuff that humans can read, and object code, which can mostly only be read by computers. This man having the problem was an academic type, very much used to the idea of sharing and modifying. He had a printer, but it wasn't working properly. What he wanted was to look at the program controlling the printer, at its code, to fix the problem and make it work better. But that wasn't possible, the people who made the printer only sent along its object code. This made the man very grumpy. He knew, because he was a good programmer, that if he could read the code, he'd be able to solve his problem. This, for him, was a tipping point. He didn't want to have to deal with programs that he wasn't able to change. He wanted to be self sufficient and to solve his problems himself.
So, fed up, he wrote something too. He wrote a manifesto, explaining why it was important to have the freedom to see and modify code. With his manifesto, he started a movement, because other people felt the same way. They thought that the freedom to modify and examine was fundamental to software. The man who wrote the manifesto started working on an operating system of his own. When you think of an operating system, you may think of Windows or Mac OS or even Linux. The man with the printer trouble and the manifesto started his work before any of those others really existed. The problem, though, was that he never managed to finish it. He lost the race. And other operating systems, ones that didn't show off their source code, became dominant. That's what happened in our world.
In another world, things went a little differently. In that world, no one paid much attention to the young man with the angry letter. Instead, they kept on copying and sharing, the way they always had. When the man with the printer came along, he got a lot more attention than he did in our world. And there were a lot more people there to lend a hand when he started writing his own operating system. With all those extra helping hands, he finished it. And it began to dominate. Because people could look at the source code, it was adapted for all kinds of different computers. And because people used it and were enthusiastic about it, they worked on it. So it improved, quite quickly. And because other programmers could see the code, change it and redistribute it, people made their own versions. If one person didn't like the way the operating system worked, she was allowed, without even asking, to take the existing code and make changes. Then the programmer would give it a different name and release it for other people to use and work on.
All of this meant that lots of different operating systems proliferated. Anyone who had the time, interest and skill could make a personal version of the operating system. Any company or institution with special requirements could hire a programmer to make the changes for them. And because of the license allowing people to copy and change, but also requiring them to release their derivative work under a similar license, all those changes wound up out in circulation. Any big company making changes to the software had to release those changes, for the benefit of the rest of the community.
In this other world, even if our computers ran different software, they could still talk to each other just fine. They'd talk to each other on common protocols, written sets of rules, explaining the technical specifications needed to make computers speak the same language. Anyone following those instructions properly could implement the protocol. So, in another world, regardless of what software your computer used, it could still communicate seamlessly with others.
Unfortunately, in the now of that other world, there are some rumblings going on. A large company called The Dacre Group, a private equity firm dominant in retail financing, is starting to hire up programmers. And no one is saying why, not even the people they're contacting. One day, you get the fateful email. They want to hire you for a special project. It pays very well. And you'd do well to accept. When you push them on what the project is, they explain that they can't tell you anything unless you sign a non-disclosure agreement. If you don't do that, they say, they can't tell you. Bothered by this, you decline their offer. But you start looking around, trying to find hints about what's going on. Why would a private equity firm want to hire so many programmers, and on such a secretive basis? So you search.
Around the middle of the twentieth century, we started using software to program our computers. Except it wasn't really a ware. Mostly, computers were bought by large institutions, universities and research centres. People who needed to do very serious calculations bought computers. The programs weren't thought of as something worth selling. They were specific things that the people who owned computers wrote for themselves. They might have someone on staff to write programs for the computer, or they might hire someone in to do it. Either way, the great big computers were expensive and the little programs were not. So the programs didn't matter much. But they were useful, so people traded them. And if I gave you my program, you could change it, too. Because you could see how I'd told my computer what to do.
Eventually, computers got a little cheaper. And when computers got cheaper, more people started buying them. Not just big institutions with buildings full of researchers, but people more like you and me. These computers came with some programs. But getting more programs was a little tougher. One person doesn't have the money to hire a programmer to write programs. I could write one myself, which is what a lot of people did, but then again, I might not have a lot of time on my hands to do that. So a new option sprang up. Someone would invest some time into writing a program that they thought would be useful to lots of people. Then, they'd sell that program to as many people as they could. That's how software became something you could buy.
This, of course, didn't stop people from wanting to keep on doing what they had been doing, which was copying and sharing. Needless to say, the people who were selling programs didn't like this trading very much. There was one young man who was particularly bothered by it. He'd written a program that had turned out to be quite popular. He was bothered that lots of people, instead of buying it from him, got it the way they always had before, by trading with their friends. He didn't like this one bit. So he wrote an angry letter to a computer hobbyist magazine, making his case to the traders.
A couple years after that one young man wrote his letter, another man was having a problem. This was a problem born of a distinction. Programs are made of code. There are two types of code: source code, which is the stuff that humans can read, and object code, which can mostly only be read by computers. This man having the problem was an academic type, very much used to the idea of sharing and modifying. He had a printer, but it wasn't working properly. What he wanted was to look at the program controlling the printer, at its code, to fix the problem and make it work better. But that wasn't possible, the people who made the printer only sent along its object code. This made the man very grumpy. He knew, because he was a good programmer, that if he could read the code, he'd be able to solve his problem. This, for him, was a tipping point. He didn't want to have to deal with programs that he wasn't able to change. He wanted to be self sufficient and to solve his problems himself.
So, fed up, he wrote something too. He wrote a manifesto, explaining why it was important to have the freedom to see and modify code. With his manifesto, he started a movement, because other people felt the same way. They thought that the freedom to modify and examine was fundamental to software. The man who wrote the manifesto started working on an operating system of his own. When you think of an operating system, you may think of Windows or Mac OS or even Linux. The man with the printer trouble and the manifesto started his work before any of those others really existed. The problem, though, was that he never managed to finish it. He lost the race. And other operating systems, ones that didn't show off their source code, became dominant. That's what happened in our world.
In another world, things went a little differently. In that world, no one paid much attention to the young man with the angry letter. Instead, they kept on copying and sharing, the way they always had. When the man with the printer came along, he got a lot more attention than he did in our world. And there were a lot more people there to lend a hand when he started writing his own operating system. With all those extra helping hands, he finished it. And it began to dominate. Because people could look at the source code, it was adapted for all kinds of different computers. And because people used it and were enthusiastic about it, they worked on it. So it improved, quite quickly. And because other programmers could see the code, change it and redistribute it, people made their own versions. If one person didn't like the way the operating system worked, she was allowed, without even asking, to take the existing code and make changes. Then the programmer would give it a different name and release it for other people to use and work on.
All of this meant that lots of different operating systems proliferated. Anyone who had the time, interest and skill could make a personal version of the operating system. Any company or institution with special requirements could hire a programmer to make the changes for them. And because of the license allowing people to copy and change, but also requiring them to release their derivative work under a similar license, all those changes wound up out in circulation. Any big company making changes to the software had to release those changes, for the benefit of the rest of the community.
In this other world, even if our computers ran different software, they could still talk to each other just fine. They'd talk to each other on common protocols, written sets of rules, explaining the technical specifications needed to make computers speak the same language. Anyone following those instructions properly could implement the protocol. So, in another world, regardless of what software your computer used, it could still communicate seamlessly with others.
Unfortunately, in the now of that other world, there are some rumblings going on. A large company called The Dacre Group, a private equity firm dominant in retail financing, is starting to hire up programmers. And no one is saying why, not even the people they're contacting. One day, you get the fateful email. They want to hire you for a special project. It pays very well. And you'd do well to accept. When you push them on what the project is, they explain that they can't tell you anything unless you sign a non-disclosure agreement. If you don't do that, they say, they can't tell you. Bothered by this, you decline their offer. But you start looking around, trying to find hints about what's going on. Why would a private equity firm want to hire so many programmers, and on such a secretive basis? So you search.
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