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A comment on Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software. Parent comment

Re:Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription... by joshuaissac on Friday January 21, 2022 @06:17AM (#30022002)
> Since when could you buy COTS and expect to get the code too?

Since the 1950s and 1960s. IBM, for example, provided source code for their products until 1983.[1] The full Apple II source code was included in the Apple II Reference Manual;[2] similarly for the Atari 400/800 Technical Reference Notes.[3]

1. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hSBrPSYgjI4C&redir_esc=y (page 59)

2. https://archive.org/details/applerefjan78/page/n78/mode/2up

3. https://archive.org/details/CO16555AtariHomeComputerTechnica...

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Re:Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription... by broeng on Friday January 21, 2022 @06:27AM (#30022077)
But back then, you were rarely paying for the software directly, you were paying for hardware.
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Re:Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription... by ndiddy on Friday January 21, 2022 @08:52AM (#30023431)
If anyone is curious what happened in 1983, that’s the same year that Apple Computer Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp. set the precedent that binary data is covered by copyright (before this case, only source code was covered).
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Re:Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription... by doctor_eval on Friday January 21, 2022 @02:53PM (#30029068)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer%2C_Inc._v._Fran....
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