Comment on What was the first thing "pirated" on the net? What was the first thing to be pirated off the net in the modern age?

ComradeMiao@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• Cataath@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The history of software piracy is a reverse history. Somewhere in the 1960s code was getting robust enough that people would share their code across government and academic computers. By the time the home computer market became a thing in the 70s (Altair & BBS) sharing code was how enthusiasts actually learned to do things on their devices. Then in last days of disco a weird little Little St. James Island frequent flyer wrote a paper in a popular computing mag arguing that programmers should share because he was a greedy little entitled asshole who became the world’s first cintabillionaire by taking the OS code already freely shared with other programmers, copying it, slapping a copyright in it, and selling it back to the company that did most of the work on it.

  One of the best jokes of the 90s:

  “Windows 95 is a 32bit port of a 16bit shell for a 8bit clone of a 4bit operating system by a two bit company that can’t stand one bit of competition.”

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