Apple will be releasing the code of the operating system and applications of the Apple Lisa.
Just wanted to let everyone know the sources to the OS and applications were recovered, I converted them to Unix end of line conventions and space for Pascal tabs after the files using Disk Image Chef, and they are with Apple for review. After that’s done, the Computer History Museum will do a CHM blog post about the historical significance of the software and the code that is cleared for release by Apple will be made available in 2018. The only thing I saw that probably won’t be able to be released is the American Heritage dictionary for the spell checker in LisaWrite.
Merry Christmas everybody.
They have made the source public, but I am not sure it counts as “Open Source” in the way we typically think of it. If you look at the license on other software at the CHM it allows for non-commercial use only and restricts your ability to post it elsewhere.
Still very exciting and I plan to spend some time reading through it
It’s open source alright, but not completely free. That’s why we have such thing as free and open source software (FOSS) licensing model. Open and free (as in libre) are related, but not same.
Wouldn’t this be called Shared Source rather then Open Source?
You’re right that open source and free software is not the same, but this is completely irrelevant here, as what we are discussing neither fits the definition of open source [1] nor free software [2]. Both require that the software is available for any purpose (not only non-commercial).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
Open Source, at least in the parts of the internet where I hang out conforms to this definition:
(Source: https://opensource.org/licenses)
Source available at the computer history museum has restrictions on use and how it can be shared such that I don’t think it qualifies as Open Source.
We need a different term for what the CHM is doing. Call it Shared Source, or maybe Public Source, or whatever; but from where I sit it isn’t Open Source
Readonly source.
Except that it isn’t. You can modify it, you can do non commercial things, but you are limited in uses and cannot republish without permission.
I would like to propose: Exhibit Source
Modifications that don’t see the light of day because you don’t have permission to republish it basically don’t exist. It would be no different than someone having downloaded the source code and a hard drive corruption jumbles some of the bits around.
All museum exhibits are readonly, and those conditions (mainly the republish one) makes the code readonly in effect. You basically can’t do anything with it other than post snippets of it for historical commentary.
At least when the software enters public domain, the source to match will be available… (like it should be for all software in this http://www.osnews.com/permalink?648933 proposal of mine)
And should that day ever come, it will indeed be useful.
I am not complaining, I am just saying that Thom in his enthusiasm to publish some very cool news, used the wrong terminology
Well those companies that have been waiting to release commercial software based on 3 1/2 decade old 68000 PASCAL sources are just crap out of luck, then!
I really hope someone can use this to get a Lisa emulator up and running!
There’s a LISA emulator core (experimental) in MAME already, and then there is lisa.sunder.net … Their emulation can probably be made more accurate by the release of the source code…
Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator now emulates computers? This feels wrong…
(and why not MESS?)
MESS and MAME merged into one
What a mess.
MESS was maimed.
They should do it with the Newton.
Edited 2017-12-26 01:06 UTC
And perhaps they will in the year 2033
Eat up Martha?
what’s the point in releasing it 35 years later?
There is no practical use, but I suppose it is interesting from a historical point of view.
It would be nice if they released the build tools as well, notably the Pascal compiler and Linker.
Curious how close Lisa Pascal is to FreePascal today. Would almost be interesting to port the Lisa OS to FreePascal, convert the 68K machine code to Pascal, and, finally, get the whole kit up and running on a Raspberry Pi as a target.
That would make for a really cool Mac Classic or Lisa mod if you could find an old case on e-bay.