The world’s first real open source?
From Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work, I just read this interview (quotation is about 3/4 of the way in) with Steve Wozniak, about what really made a success of the Apple II (it was launched in 1977):
“We made it easy for anyone to do what they wanted to do. And I think that was one of the biggest keys to its success. We didn’t make it a hidden machine that we own-we sell it, it does this, you got it-like Commodore and RadioShack did.
We put out manuals that had just hundreds of pages of listings of code, descriptions of circuits, examples of boards that you would plug in, so that anyone could look at this and say, “Now I know how I would do my own.” They could type in the programs on their own Apple II and then see “that’s how that works” instantly and know how to write their own programs. Running cards was the most important thing. All these companies started up making cards that you could plug into your Apple II and write a little software (mostly games at first) on cassette tapes. You’d go to the store and they’d just have all this stuff that you could buy to enhance the Apple II. So one of our big keys to success was that we were very open. There’s a big world out there for other people to come and join us.”
Open source history here.
ps: to those reading this in facebook, I do have a life beyond writing notes!