#opensourcehistory — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #opensourcehistory, aggregated by home.social.
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The Story of vi
“I’m still using vi because I can’t escape it."
vi was created in 1976 by Bill Joy while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. At the time most people used line based editors like ed and ex. These editors were powerful but difficult to use because you could not see the surrounding text while editing. Bill Joy wanted a full screen visual editor that would let users move around and edit interactively.
He originally wrote vi as a visual mode for the ex editor rather than as a completely separate program. When people type vi on many systems today they are actually running ex in visual mode. His goal was to make text editing faster and more intuitive on the hardware available at the time.
One important detail is the terminal Bill Joy used while developing vi. He worked on a Lear Siegler ADM 3A terminal. This keyboard had the Escape key where the Tab key is located on modern keyboards and it had no arrow keys. Because of this layout Bill Joy designed vi to rely heavily on the Escape key and the hjkl keys for movement. These design choices are still used in vi and vim today.
vi quickly became popular because it was fast and worked well over slow network connections. vi became the standard text editor on almost every Unix and Linux system. System administrators and developers learned it because it was almost always available.
vi also played a major role in starting one of the longest running debates in computing history known as the editor wars between vi and Emacs. vi users generally value speed and staying on the home row while Emacs users value its high level of customization. This rivalry has continued for decades.
Although the original vi is quite old its influence remains strong. Even today if you log into a minimal Linux server vi or vim is often the only text editor available by default.
#OpenSourceHistory #ComputingHistory #vi #vim #TechHistory #TextEditor #EditorWars #UnixHistory #linux
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The Great Tanenbaum–Torvalds Flame War (1992)
In early 1992, a well respected computer science professor named Andrew Tanenbaum posted a message on Usenet with the title "Linux is obsolete." At the time, Tanenbaum was known for creating Minix, a small Unix like operating system used in universities. He argued that Linux was a step backward because it used a monolithic kernel design instead of a microkernel. He believed monolithic kernels were outdated and that Linux would never be relevant on modern hardware.
Linus Torvalds, who was only 21 years old and still a student in Finland, did not stay quiet. He replied directly in the same thread and defended his design choices. Linus explained that he built Linux to be practical and useful on the hardware people actually had, rather than following academic ideals. His response was respectful but firm, and he pushed back against Tanenbaum’s criticisms point by point.
What started as a technical disagreement quickly turned into one of the most famous public debates in computing history. The argument played out openly on Usenet in front of thousands of readers. Tanenbaum was seen as the established expert, while Linus was just a young developer working on a hobby project. Many people at the time agreed with Tanenbaum and thought Linux had little future.
Decades later, the outcome looks very different. Linux became the foundation of modern computing, powering servers, smartphones through Android, supercomputers, and embedded systems around the world. Minix, once considered the more advanced academic system, is now mostly remembered because of this debate.
The flame war did more than create drama. It helped spread early awareness of Linux and showed that a determined student could challenge established ideas and build something that lasted.
#Linux #LinusTorvalds #OpenSource #OpenSourceHistory #CodingHistory #DevLife
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Born from Pure Spit
The Origin of Git
In 2005, the Linux kernel project was using a proprietary version control system called BitKeeper. The owner of BitKeeper, Larry McVoy, had given the Linux developers a free license because he liked open source. It worked well.
Then drama happened.
McVoy got into a fight with some Linux developers (specifically over reverse-engineering BitKeeper to make it work better with their workflow). In April 2005, he revoked the free license for the Linux kernel team.
Linus Torvalds was furious.
Instead of negotiating, begging, or switching to one of the existing open source version control systems at the time (like Subversion, which he hated), Linus did something completely unhinged:
He decided to write his own version control system from scratch.According to multiple accounts, he started working on it around April 3rd, 2005. By April 6th, he was already managing the Linux kernel with his new tool. The initial version was written in about two weeks (some say the core was even faster). He named it Git a name he has described as a combination of British slang for "unpleasant person" and an acronym for "Global Information Tracker" (though he’s also said it stands for "Goddamn Idiotic Truckload of sh*t").
#Linux #TechDrama #OpenSourceHistory #RageCode
#DevLife #Git #LinusTorvalds
#BuiltOutOfSpite -
Continuing my journey into fediverse past, I listened to this fun interview with Eugen Rochko from 2019 on a podcast called “Nothing but the Toot”.
Nowadays I think Gargron is often seen as a caricature of sorts, and it was nice to hear a more human side here. Good to know their love of cat posts has been consistent all this time! 😸
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Continuing my journey into fediverse past, I listened to this fun interview with Eugen Rochko from 2019 on a podcast called “Nothing but the Toot”.
Nowadays I think Gargron is often seen as a caricature of sorts, and it was nice to hear a more human side here. Good to know their love of cat posts has been consistent all this time! 😸
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Fill in the blank with any open source group. Not picking on Mastodon, just using as an example.
Mastodon has used Discord since at least 2018. I found essential tidbits about how featured profiles originated for an article I wrote - that information did not exist anywhere else.
All of that history will be lost if / when they move somewhere else.
I wish there was more use of self-hosted forums, but I get the enticement of real time chat.
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Fill in the blank with any open source group. Not picking on Mastodon, just using as an example.
Mastodon has used Discord since at least 2018. I found essential tidbits about how featured profiles originated for an article I wrote - that information did not exist anywhere else.
All of that history will be lost if / when they move somewhere else.
I wish there was more use of self-hosted forums, but I get the enticement of real time chat.