Is the command line the only way to free software?

[bogstad-e+AXbWqSrlAAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Bill Bogstad)]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> And, if I recall, the X Window system itself predates Microsoft Windows,
> although it was not free back in the 1980s.

Just to be pedantic (and spending some time on Wikipedia)...

Actually, Windows 1.0 was released in 1985 which is after the first X
windows release in 1984; but before the first X11 release
in 1987.   Of course, nobody paid much attention to Windows until 3.0
in 1990.  The Apple Lisa was first available in 1983 with
the MacOS coming out in 1984.   So basically everybody had a windowing
system by the mid-80s, the difference is that nobody used Microsoft's
version for another 5 years.

Also, the X Window system was always free.   Unfortunately, it was
released under the MIT license (similar to the BSD license) which did
not require recipients to make changes to the source code available to
others.  The result was every workstation vendor made their own
private changes and you rarely had access to the source code for what
was actually shipped to you.   If you had low end graphics from Sun
(apparently the hardware of choice at MIT), you could compile a
completely functional X Window system yourself.  High end graphics or
non-Sun and you usually had to use the vendor's X server.   Or if you
wanted to use Sun's SunView libraries/applications because they
weren't actually written to the X protocol and you had to use Sun's X
server which supported both.

Bill Bogstad