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In the early days, the FSF sold magtapes with GNU software on them - the charge wasn't for the IP, it was for the material and labor required to copy the tape(s).
See http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/bull/16/gnu_bulletin_28.h... for a sample FSF order form from June 1993.
Kind of makes you want to give the internet a great big hug, doesn't it?
This is from 1984. He's talking about Unipress Emacs.
There was also a commercial version, Unipress EMACS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs
There are some awesome snippets in there that really helps put in perspective how nice we have it today to build/distribute/use software.
"Page fault, and the computer makes a phone call. Direct broadcast or audio disk - that's the technology to do that. It's half a gigabyte - and you get 100 kilobyte data rate or a megabyte or something. I don't remember. You can then carry around with you all the software you need. You can get random data through some communications link. It is very like Dick Tracy."
Another bit that leapt out for me is his discussion of displays. He's talking about flatscreen color displays, about 15-20 years before they really become commonplace.
My favorite is the end, where he talks about how belief and momentum influence the investment into different technologies. Makes you wonder what technologies have been "coming soon" for the last decade, but are just waiting for someone to come in and spend the required amount to pull them off.
"And then the source code got scrunched and I didn't have a complete listing."
"If that scrunch had not happened, vi would have multiple windows, and I might have put in some programmability - but I don't know."
"I actually used [be] to edit itself and scrunched the source code - sort of old home day, because we used to do that all the time."
What does Bill mean by the word "scrunch" here? Is this some jargon lost to the ages?
From context, I'd guess that "scrunched" means trashed/junked/lost/broken. As in, "And then the source code got trashed and I didn't have a complete listing."
Pretty sure he speaks of Unipress Emacs. A little history:
Richard M. Stallman wrote the original Editor MACroS for the TECO editor.
James A. Gosling implemented Emacs in C as a stand-alone editor, sometimes called "Gosmacs", and distributed it freely with no copyright notice. Gosmacs had an extention language called Mocklisp, which wasn't really a Lisp (it had no lists) but appeared similar.
RMS used Gosmacs to get started on GNU Emacs, which featured a "real" Lisp (close to Maclisp).
JAG sold the rights to Gosmacs to Unipress, who renamed it Unipress Emacs, sold it commercially, and stopped distribution of gosmacs and derivatives (like GNU Emacs).
Presumably it was around this time the interview with Bill Joy occurred.
RMS rewrote the part of GNU Emacs that was derived Gosmacs, mostly the display code. One could guess that this experience is part of why the GNU project insists on signed copyright assignment or release forms for key utilities.
The bit about Emacs being updated so often that it's hard to keep up with its features confirms that it wasn't a version that RMS had anything to do with...
The dates match. The interview is from 1984, which was after the formerly free-beer Gosmacs had gone commercial ("hundreds of dollars... did I miss something?" --- yes, Gosling's deal), but before the first public release of GNU Emacs in 1985, per jwz's timeline here:
http://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs-timeline.html
[1984]
unipress emacs : 395$ / 1983Q2
http://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs-timeline.html