(Date: 30 July 2024)
There are a few interesting quotes from the time frame of 1983–1984, from RMS and Dennis Ritchie.
So it will be time for me to turn to the future, and depart from the remains of my former home. I don’t know where I will go. But I am determined to keep on hacking and make sure you are free to use the results. In two or three years, typical personal computers will be powerful enough to run the programs I write. Then you will see it: perhaps a text editor like EMACS, perhaps something else, but in any case written in clean, extensible LISP, and available to you with full sources, free for you to share with your friends as an upright hacker does.
Good Hacking!
Richard M Stallman
The Happy Hacker
Source: Steele, Stallman et. al. “The Jargon File 1.5”
Instead I have chosen an ambitious project that strikes at the root of the way that the commercial, hostile way of life is maintained. I am going to write GNU, a complete replacement for the Unix software system (kernel, compilers, utilities and documentation), to be given away free to everyone.
GNU will make it easy for hackers to decide to live by sharing and cooperation. Making use of a computer requires a software system. Now, with no free software systems available, it is a tremendous sacrifice to refuse to use owned software. But once a desirable software system is available free, that pressure will be forever lifted. Hackers will be free to share.
I start on Thanksgiving. I’m asking computer manufacturers for donations to the cause, but I’m going to do it even if I have to work as a waiter. Already other programmers who miss the old ways are rallying to the cause. Join in and help! and maybe the old spirit of the AI lab will live again.
Good Hacking
Richard M Stallman
The Happy Hacker
Source: RMS, https://www.gnu.org/gnu/road-to-gnu.html, April 1983, updated late 1983
What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form. We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing […] is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication.
Dennis Ritchie, “The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System," October 1984
(Quoted in Brian Kernighan, “UNIX: A History and a Memoir”, 2020)