[volkercraig]

Without the gnu projects, software would have remained in the domain of universities and industry. Distributing it for free and encapsulating it with an actual legal license was radical in and of itself, but the notion of being required to distribute source was even more radical. Without that, people don't learn to code outside of industry, people don't share ideas and software remains in corporate silos with no/low interoptability unless a business decides to form a strategic partnership.

[NetMageSCW]

> outside of industry, people don't share ideas and software remains in corporate silos with no/low interoptability unless a business decides to form a strategic partnership.

Computer science and computing was taught and done at universities long before Stallman and GNU came along. I was using C++ Release E at college before GNU started, provided by Bell Labs at no cost.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Provided to whom ?

Most of that stuff was made available to universities and colleges as institutions, but not to individual students. Once you graduate, you have no effective (or legal) access to it anymore ...

[mghackerlady]

Sure it was free (as in beer) but was it free (as in speech?) Could you modify and improve the compiler? If you did, could you redistribute it? Knowing bell labs, the answer is a definite no to the last one

[DonHopkins]

Even after Sun got a C++ compiler for free for internal use (but not by their customers) by jumping into bed with AT&T, they still hired Michael Tiemann of Cygnus Support to port G++ to Solaris.

[f1shy]

That said the previous post.

>> remained in the domain of universities and industry

> I was using C++ Release E at college before GNU started, provided by Bell Labs at no cost.

Was the source available, and possible to modify it?