#softwarehistory — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #softwarehistory, aggregated by home.social.
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L'art du game design en 1987 : prendre un CPU Motorola 68000 à 8 MHz, dessiner des sprites magnifiques en palette 16 couleurs limitée, et programmer une escorte d'IA complètement imprévisible (coucou Assurancetourix). Astérix chez Rahàzade sur Atari ST reste un monument d'adaptation BD, brut de décoffrage. 🐘🎨
Y as-tu joué ? sur quelle machine ?
#RetroGaming #AtariST #Motorola68000 #GameDev #SoftwareHistory
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Bruce Perens wrote the Open Source Definition and applied to trademark the phrase. The Open Source Initiative gave up in June 1999, too descriptive to register. It settled for a label it could police, OSI Certified. Perens had already resigned, arguing the term outsold the freedoms behind it.
#OpenSource #SoftwareHistory #TechHistory #FOSS
https://canartuc.medium.com/she-defined-it-the-only-expert-said-no-a-man-got-credit-for-20-years-c101a0ea1da7 -
Eric Raymond told the community on February 8, 1998 to drop free software for open source. He called it a term the group came up with. His history page listed Christine Peterson as an attendee, not the author. She let it stand. Todd Anderson told him, and Raymond fixed the page. Peterson wrote her account in 2006. It ran in February 2018.
#OpenSource #SoftwareHistory #TechHistory #FOSS
https://canartuc.medium.com/she-defined-it-the-only-expert-said-no-a-man-got-credit-for-20-years-c101a0ea1da7 -
The Foresight Institute spent late 1997 explaining free software in business rooms. Business people hear free as a price. The community had an answer, free as in freedom not free as in beer. It works on insiders and turns software rights into drink prices everywhere else. I have watched in-group phrasing end budget meetings for 20 years.
#OpenSource #SoftwareHistory #TechHistory #FOSS
https://canartuc.medium.com/she-defined-it-the-only-expert-said-no-a-man-got-credit-for-20-years-c101a0ea1da7 -
Christine Peterson ran the phrase open source past four people. Eric Drexler and Mark Miller liked it. So did Todd Anderson. The fourth worked in marketing and public relations. He objected that open was overused. Peterson wrote that he was right in theory. She went with it. Nine weeks on, the industry took the word he voted against.
#OpenSource #SoftwareHistory #TechHistory #FOSS
https://canartuc.medium.com/she-defined-it-the-only-expert-said-no-a-man-got-credit-for-20-years-c101a0ea1da7 -
Christine Peterson trained as a chemist, not a coder. She sat at the meeting at VA Research on February 5, 1998. She carried the words open source and no credibility. Todd Anderson said them for her, as agreed. Minutes later someone else used them, unaware where they came from.
#OpenSource #SoftwareHistory #TechHistory #FOSS
https://canartuc.medium.com/she-defined-it-the-only-expert-said-no-a-man-got-credit-for-20-years-c101a0ea1da7 -
"fun facts to learn and know"
The history of Xerox Mesa
The modular programming language you have probably never heard of.Paul has connected all of the dots going back as far as the 1950s
https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/mesa/#prehistory
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I got an email today about “changes to my Zight lifetime account” — an account I have no memory of 🤨
Seems it’s a rebrand of CloudApp (similar to Droplr if that rings a bell) I signed-up back in 2010!?
CloudApp and Droplr were quick 1-off image/screenshot and file sharing freemium services with slick desktop apps that launched around 2008-2010. Evernote also launched in this period, kinda the golden age of slick native apps with cloud services.
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Ah, the riveting chronicles of Win16 Memory Management 🙄. Because nothing screams "edge of your seat" excitement like diving into the arcane scribbles of prehistoric computing. Spoiler alert: it's as thrilling as watching paint dry 🖌️.
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/win16-memory-management/ #Win16MemoryManagement #PrehistoricComputing #TechHumor #SoftwareHistory #MemoryManagement #HackerNews #ngated -
I've built a virtual museum with nearly every operating system you can think of
#HackerNews #virtualmuseum #operating #systems #techinnovation #softwarehistory #retrocomputing
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SICPers podcast episode 56 on Niklaus Wirth's "A Plea for Lean Software": what it is, what makes it a good idea, and why it'll never happen. https://www.sicpers.info/podcast/episode-56-a-plea-for-lean-software/ #computerhistory #softwarehistory #podcast
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Harry McCracken's article about the life and death of multimedia cd-roms provides a good retrospective of its glory days.
i wonder how many people today can remember a time when they did not have to be suspicious or skeptical about facts they were reading, because it was written by a team of editors with research and writing standards?
https://www.fastcompany.com/91128052/history-of-cd-roms-encarta-myst
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MS Dinosaurs and Encarta are often fondly remembered, but i personally think that Oceans had some of the best multimedia design. it's very book-like in presentation, with zero scrolling. every page is carefully written to exploit the limited space, and the sheer amount of hyperlinking between pages makes exploration *fun*.
here's a 2 minute quick tour of Oceans. i'm not sure how many people ever saw it back in the day. top-tier edutainment imo.
one of the most painful aspects of wikipedia is that due to its layout and allergy to brevity/density, it's about as fun to explore as a phone book. i'd love to some day see a redesign focused on the joy of exploration.
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a roundtable with several developers who worked on the MS Encarta cd-rom encyclopedias. it's surprisingly in-depth about what it was like trying to cram a bookshelf onto a single disc in the 90s. you can tell they really loved working on it.
part 1:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/retro-tech/microsoft-encarta-let-wizard-do-itpart 2:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/retro-tech/remembering-microsoft-encarta -
10 years ago, someone wrote a test for servo that included an expiry in 2026
https://mastodon.social/@jdm_/116429380667467307
#HackerNews #servo #test #expiry2026 #softwarehistory #technews #programming
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Windows 95 defenses against installers that overwrite a file with an older one
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260324-00/?p=112159
#HackerNews #Windows95 #Installers #FileOverwrite #SoftwareHistory #TechSecurity
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🚀 Wow, someone dug up a dusty old software relic from 1977 and decided it belongs on #GitHub, because why not clutter the internet with ancient code? 🤖 Meanwhile, modern developers are busy trying to remember what a "mathematician" even is, while GitHub's AI tools wonder if they can make this fossil run on Windows 11. 🦖
https://github.com/white-flame/am #softwarehistory #ancientcode #relics #AItools #Windows11 #HackerNews #ngated -
Perl was weird, messy, brilliant, and absolutely foundational to the early web.
Before modern frameworks and JavaScript everywhere, Perl powered CGI scripts, forms, counters, search tools, admin panels, and the kind of text processing that made the first dynamic websites possible.
A lot of people remember Perl as a joke. History says otherwise.
https://linuxexpert.org/perl-the-strange-language-that-built-the-early-web/
#Perl #Linux #OpenSource #WebDevelopment #CGI #Programming #SoftwareHistory #SysAdmin #LinuxExpert
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🚀🎩 Oh look, a thrilling 33-minute ode to a fossilized spreadsheet—Lotus 1-2-3—because apparently, we're desperate for #nostalgia over functional software. Next, let's pine for dial-up modems and floppy disks, because who needs progress when you’ve got vintage tech? 🙄📉
https://stonetools.ghost.io/lotus123-dos/ #vintageTech #Lotus123 #softwareHistory #techThrowback #HackerNews #ngated -
😂 Ah, the age-old dream of a programmer-free utopia, where mythical code fairies do all the work! 🚀 Clearly, the history of software is just one long joke about eliminating programmers that we keep failing to get. 🤖 Keep trying, tech wizards, maybe the 100th attempt will finally stick! 🧙♂️
https://www.ivanturkovic.com/2026/01/22/history-software-simplification-cobol-ai-hype/ #programmerUtopia #codeFairies #techHumor #softwareHistory #codingJokes #techWizards #HackerNews #ngated -
In a breathtaking exposé on ancient software that nobody asked for, we explore the riveting "History of a Security Hole" through 47* submenus of OS2 trivia! 🤯💾 Pro tip: skip this if you prefer adventures more exhilarating than watching paint dry. 🥱✨
https://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-history-of-a-security-hole/ #ancientsoftware #historyofsecurityholes #OS2trivia #techhumor #softwarehistory #HackerNews #ngated -
Every few years, the industry rediscovers a familiar truth: complexity does not disappear, it relocates.
We rename patterns, rebuild the same structures with better tooling, then act surprised when the old trade-offs return. Sometimes they do improve. Often the real progress is simply that we have better ways to observe and contain failure.
History does not make you cynical.
It makes you harder to sell to.#SoftwareHistory #Tech #SystemsThinking #SoftwareEngineering #HypeCycle #ByernNotes
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50 years ago today, Bill Gates fired off his iconic "Open Letter to Hobbyists," calling out software piracy as theft that stifled innovation. 📜💻 Marking a pivotal moment in tech history! Read more: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Bill-Gates-open-letter-to-hobbyists-50-years-of-software-piracy-11163833.html #BillGates #SoftwareHistory #TechThrowback
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Call for Applications: ACM History and Archiving Fellowship program, due 28th February 2026
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) History Committee plans to support up to 5 research projects with awards of up to $4,000 each. Call is at link below.
#historyofcomputing #softwarehistory #aihistory #historyhttps://history.acm.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/ACM-HC-fellowship-CFP-2026-final.pdf
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Ah yes, the tale of open source's "victory" 🏆—let's all gather 'round to hear how "nobody gets fired" for choosing open source. Meanwhile, Microsoft is chuckling in the corner, sipping its proprietary tea ☕️, reminiscing about the good old days when it was the "cancer." But hey, at least we can pay what we like to read about this prehistoric battle. 😂
https://overreacted.io/open-social/ #openSourceVictory #MicrosoftProprietary #techHumor #softwareHistory #openSourceCommunity #HackerNews #ngated
