! OpenBSD was only a few months old when ! we realized that read-only repository access ! for everyone was a critical concept. !
! Previously, open source projects would make ! occasional releases accompanied by tarballs of ! final source files and Changelogs files, but would ! not expose the step-by-step changes of the ! development process. Unwittingly all open source ! projects were operating with a walled garden ! approach. !
! Chuck Cranor and I worked on the anoncvs feature, and ! Bob Beck soon became involved in moving the anoncvs ! mirror off my overloaded ISDN network to the ! University of Alberta, thereby increasing our capacity ! to deliver. Nowadays there are many anoncvs mirrors. !
! The introduction of anoncvs meant people without commit ! access could read the commit logs, as well as each ! committed diff. They could reason about the past as ! they proposed new changes. !
! Anoncvs had an immediate impact expanding our development ! group. We were inundated with high quality diffs. These ! outsider developers wrote excellent changes because they had ! sufficient context to reason upon. Those who overwhelmed us ! with good changes became developers with commit access. We ! were forced to hand out commit accounts like candy. !
! Some people said we would never last. Their cynicism ! could almost be thanked for the increase in openness ! we embraced, and then our openness probably led others ! to embrace it also. !
! Bought with my Sun workstation,
! Hacked on it 'til my fingers bled.
! Was the winter of '95.
+ Me and the guys from core,
+ Had a source tree with lots of history.
+ Chris and Charles held a little coup,
+ I should have known I'd lose my history.
+
+ Oh, when I look back now,
+ I can see we all have nothing
+ When it all can be... + when it can be taken away.
+ Everyone needs to know their history.
+ It was the winter of '95
+
+ So we carried on with a fresh source tree,
+ Spent all of our hours coding,
+ Making changes in our private history,
+ Repeating the error of the past, yeah.
+
+ The source tree just got too big,
+ Too many diffs, too unreliable,
+ Too few people had any access;
+ Got to open it up now and forever
+ Everyone needs to see the history.
+
+ Sometimes when I look for something
+ Reading ancient tarballs with despair
+ I wonder what they were thinking.
+
+ And now the times have changed
+ Repos on the web, git,
+ now githubs everywhere.
+ not like the winter of '95
+
+ Back around that Halloween,
+ Microsoft said open source would never last,
+ But now they use the repo tools,
+ In the same open access way.
+
+ Everyone needs to see the history.
+
+
