TOPIC 4: My Experience with an Open Source Product

When I was younger (and perhaps not so wise), I found myself using a LOT of what we'd call today open source software. Back then (circa 1990), we didn't so much call it "open source," but we knew the idea. We called it "freeware" or "shareware," and much of it came with little admonitions that if you liked the product, you could send a few bucks to the developer. Alternately, you might find an ad that would tell you that a paid version could be purchased. 

In those days, most of the really fun stuff that could be found for Macintosh machines and platforms took the form of the not-paid-for nature. We didn't care about viruses for Macs back then, and I guess we still don't. The funny thing is, I'm not 100% where all of these programs came from. We had games like RISK, Artillery, FreeCell, and Centipede that we played on the old black-and-white screens of our early Macs. It was fun, and we shared them via floppy disks (the 3.25" ones, not those really old 5.5" disks). For all of the 25 machines on which we ran these things, I dunno that any one of us ever send a U.S. dollar to a developer.

A game I remember well... Though this one's in German?

We didn't really care about the morality of these games, and I'm not sure that many who use open source today even care about such, either. The free software movement has really taken off since around 1998, and the ways that we distributed and used our little "free" games is cast into a different light today. I would feel like a thief now for playing these things for free... Or would I? I mean, those games were inferior to the little widget games that come free with Windows 7.

That said, they were pretty awesome back in the 90s! Ah, they were simpler times.