Re:Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations ...
by wnissen on Tuesday March 16, 2021 @06:25PM
(#26484012)
I know what you're saying but the discoverability of such tools, especially on DOS, was poor. Everyone I knew was buying compilers or, ahem, downloading them from other than authorized sources. It was unreal when I was able to buy a RedHat CD-ROM for a few bucks (from Tucows?) and get access to a full tool suite. You couldn't get huge software packages over 56K modems from BBSes.
There were open source coding tools in the early 90s (a lot of the GNU tools, including Emacs and GCC, were first released in the mid-to-late 1980s.)