A 1973 copy of UNIX v4 was recently discovered in a closet at the University of Utah. The tape, which was evidently sent by Ken Thompson himself, is on its way to the Computer History Museum, in the hope that they have the hardware to read it.
Just discovered that Diomidis Spinellis has created The Unix History repository on GitHub. This repository contains the full source trees of Unix releases over the last 43 years from the Epoch at Bell Labs in 1972 through to the FreeBSD 10.1.0 in 2015.
It’s fascinating to watch Ken and Dennis in action renovating the code base.
Just catching up and wanted to post a link to the great time I had talking about the Faces of Open Source project with Doc Searls and Simon Phipps on their show. We covered a lot of ground including my own origin story about how I got involved with open source and the Internet way back when…
Right before the holidays, I decided to suspend offering NFTs of the Faces of Open Source photographs due to hostility and attacks on Twitter and elsewhere.
If the hostility had only been directed at me, I would’ve tolerated it, but sadly, it spilled over to some of the people I photographed. Not wanting this project to be a source of angst for anyone, or a litmus test for being on the “right” side of the NFT argument, I decided that a suspension was best.
That said, I want to address many of the misconceptions tweeted about the NFT offering, photography rights, and the Faces of Open Source project in general. I also want to offer a photographer’s perspective on NFTs and why I believe they are important for artists.
MoreUPDATE 12/23/21: We’ve suspended this program for now. Read about why here.
One of the questions I’m asked most frequently about the Faces of Open Source project is “why haven’t you photographed (insert name here)?”. The answer is most likely that I just haven’t gotten to them yet. This kind of ongoing photo documentation takes A LOT of time to produce, and while I’d like to do more photo shoots each year, it often comes down to funding.
When I began the project in 2014, my initial idea for funding the project was to produce and sell a coffee table book of the photographs. But over time, I realized that a book would be missing the last 9-12 months of new Faces by the time it landed on coffee tables. Selling a book isn’t a great way to fund an on-going project.
As I continued thinking about alternative (and creative) ways to fund the project, I was also watching this explosion of NFTs (aka Non-fungible tokens) in the art marketplace. As a photographer used to licensing digital copies my photos (or selling physical versions as fine art prints) I wasn’t sure where photography might fit into the NFT universe. But, once I realized that NFTs are analogous to a “digital print”, I began to wonder if they’d be a fun way to fund Faces of Open Source.
And so… I’m excited to announce that beginning on April 7th, we’re going to begin selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of the Faces of Open Source photographs.
I realize that you might be tired of hearing about NFTs. They’ve certainly been in the news a lot. You might’ve read about how one artist is selling NFTs of his digital art for millions. Or how the NBA has used NFTs to create a market for videos of “moments” from basketball games. The whole NFT space looks like a giant money grab right now. That said, NFTs are here to stay because they make any kind of digital file uniquely collectable – even photographs.
Selling NFTs of photos is very similar to selling limited edition fine art prints (which I’ve been doing for years), except that with NFTs, collectors are buying “one of a kind” digital copies made possible by the magic of the blockchain. When you buy one of our NTFs, this means you will own one of the limited number of copies (of each photograph) we will ever make available. This is currently the only way to collect and own the Faces of Open Source photographs.
Yes you should! Here are some of the unique things about our NFT sale:
This last item is really important. It’s not lost on me that there would be no NFTs or blockchain (or this project for that matter) without the work of the open source community.
Another thing that I really like about NFTs is that they have the potential to radically change the fundraising conversation around creative projects. Instead of asking (ok, begging) people to make charitable donations, NFTs can be used to sell ownership of a tangible piece of the project itself.
Making a donation versus buying a NFT might seem like semantics, but I think NFTs have the ability to change people’s behavior. Whenever we own something it means we have the potential to build equity. If you’ve ever owned a home, or been granted stock options in a startup venture, then you know powerful a motivator equity is when it comes to making something a success. I want everyone who owns a piece of this project to have a reason to see it grow and flourish into the future. Funding derived from ongoing NFT sales could be the way to make that happen.
If you’re looking for a way to support the historical documentation of the open source revolution, go buy one of our NFTs. 😀
UPDATE 12/23/21: We’ve suspended this program for now. Read about why here.
Wikipedia turned 20 today. What started as a grand experiment to create a better encyclopedia has turned into essential fabric that now holds together the discourse of modern society.
Here is a favorite shot of Katherine Maher who is the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. She has been leading the organization since taking the reigns in 2016.
I hope to add more Wikipedians to the project as there are many more unsung heroes that deserve recognition in that community.
I’m pleased to report that we added 18 new Faces to the project in 2019!
Here they are listed in the order that they were photographed:
Once again I want to thank all of the participants for being so generous with their time and for their willingness to be part of this project. It’s a privilege to tell your stories.
See you in 2020!
Someone once described O’Reilly’s OSCON conference to me as a sort of “homecoming”. I didn’t really understand what they meant until the team at O’Reilly Media invited us to exhibit the Faces of Open Source at this year’s conference.
For the past twenty years, the open source community comes together at OSCON for a week of open source talks, seminars, and networking. For many attendees, OSCON is a chance to put faces to names that they might only know from interactions online — which meant our exhibit fit right in with the ethos of the conference.
The exhibit provided a unique way for attendees to see faces from the broader open source community and to learn about their contributions to open source projects and history.
As the number of Faces in the project has grown, we’ve had to put a lot of thought into how best to exhibit 100+ portraits. For OSCON, we opted to do a digital exhibit using a series of large monitors in portrait orientation. The OSCON team created a wonderful surround for the monitors which rotated through a sequenced loop of the portraits.
Another cool feature of the exhibit were the unique QR codes that we added to each photograph. Viewers could scan any Face’s QR code with their mobile phone to pull up detailed caption info about the person from our website.
I want to thank the team at O’Reilly for making this happen. It personally meant a lot to me to see the OSCON community interact with the exhibit. And yes, it really did feel like coming home.
Honored to have our photo of Linus Torvalds on the cover of the 25th Anniversary issue of Linux Journal. If you are not already a subscriber to Linux Journal please consider supporting their work!!
I love IEEE Spectrum magazine and not just because they published a wonderful profile of the project in their February issue. You can read an online version here.
One of the biggest project hurdles we face is the logistics of scheduling photo shoots with participants.
The truth be told, people involved in open source are busy and in high demand! When you combine that fact with my schedule, it’s not uncommon for it to sometimes take months (or even years) to schedule portrait sittings.
Luckily, a lot of participants are based in, or travel to, Silicon Valley and New York City where I can often find a time to bring them into the studio. Other times, we have to pack the car (or get on a plane) and bring the studio to them.
That’s exactly what we did in October when Todd Lewis from All Things Open reached out to see if we wanted to photograph at their very cool conference.
I love doing location shoots but they are are not inexpensive. Aside from the obvious travel costs, we have to rent the space, staff and equipment needed to setup and tear down a mini photo studio.
Thankfully, the wonderful folks at Red Hat were keen to sponsor the shoot and bring us out to Raleigh for the conference. Over the course of three days we turned a blessedly empty hotel conference room into a photo studio where we were able to photograph ten amazing speakers plus one of the seminal figures in the history of open source!
Also, while we were in town, Red Hat sponsored a really cool “mini exhibit” of the project where we displayed twenty-five of the photographs on a large, free standing, high resolution, monitor placed in the conference’s exhibit hall. Every time one of the 4,000+ conference attendees passed by the monitor, they learned about a new Face of open source as they made their way to and from sessions and meals.
We even had a celebrity sighting!
The digital display was a very impactful way to exhibit the photographs. It was also much less expensive than crating and shipping physical prints across the country. I’m excited to use more of these free standing monitors in future conference exhibits.
To cap things off, we also did a limited print run of the first Faces of Open Source “magazine” which I signed and gave away to 400 attendees. I love the magazine format and hope to use it to publish new Faces between the larger book releases.
I want to give a sincere thank you to everyone involved in making this trip such a success! The team at All Things Open was absolutely wonderful to work with throughout the conference. They really went out of their way to make us feel welcome and fully supported. Also, once again thank you to Red Hat for sponsoring this photo shoot and exhibit. We couldn’t have done it without your support!
Stay tuned.
Can you imagine if twenty years ago a group of mavericks had not developed a plan to accelerate the adoption of free and open software? We’d probably still be logging into AOL or browsing a warped version of the Web with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Yikes.
Today, February 3rd, marks the 20th anniversary of the name “open source”.
Faces of Open Source participant Christine Peterson, who coined the name, recently posted her first-hand account of how the open source label came to be. If you like tech history, Christine’s piece is a must-read.
In reality, open source is a lot more than 20 years old.
For example, Linus Torvalds created Linux in 1991 – the very same year that the BSD operating system was first freely distributed. Also, the X Window System and Richard Stallman’s GNU project both began in the 1980’s.
The roots of open source might even be traced back to the 1970’s when the Unix team at Bell Labs would “snail mail” source code to anyone who asked for it.
Suffice it to say, open source is standing on the shoulders of giants who were creating and sharing open source software long before 1998. They were just calling it by another name: “free software”.
However, by the 1990’s, that name was starting to become problematic.
For one, the word “free” was confusing. Richard Stallman, who started the free software movement, would often clarify that free was short for “free speech” and not “free beer”. This explanation helped, but not enough for businesses to get over their fear of adopting “free” software.
And so, a group of free software advocates found themselves in a conference room twenty years ago searching for a new label to explain free software.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Today, free and open source software permeates our modern way of life, playing a foundational role every time billions of people send email, visit a website or pick up their smartphones.
If you ask me, the broader open source revolution might be the single biggest tech catalyst of the 21st century! And yet, outside of the technology industry, those responsible for open source remain largely unknown.
I find this inconceivable and it’s what drives me to document the Faces of Open Source. If you feel the same way, this 20th anniversary of the open source name is a great opportunity to help spread the word.
2017 was an action-packed year for Faces of Open Source.
My traveling photo studio made its way to New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz, Palm Springs, and Los Angeles.
I photographed 26 new faces which brings the total number of participants to 72!
I’m so excited for you to see the new Faces and learn about their contributions to open source. Here’s the full list in the order they were photographed:
Larry Wall
Jim Zemlin
Christine Peterson
Keila Banks
Stormy Peters
Karen Sandler
Bradley Kuhn
Sally Khudairi
Tim O’Reilly
Doug Cutting
Mary Ann Horton
Camille Fournier
Helen Hou-Sandí
Limor Fried
Tom Igoe
Jessie Frazelle
Eliot Horowitz
Katherine Maher
Zaheda Bhorat
Brendan Eich
Junio Hamano
Jim Kent
Sara Chipps
Pia Mancini
Jon “maddog” Hall
Brewster Kahle
I’m looking forward to a little break from travel and then it’s on to 2018 and a whole new set of Faces. Stay tuned!
Ever wonder where open source projects get their names?
If so, you are going love Kerberos – the authentication protocol developed at MIT in the 1980’s and still in use today.
The project’s name comes from Greek mythology and refers to the three-headed beast that guards the entrance to the underworld.
Faces participant Dan Geer explains all in this gem from 1991.
Amazing photo of many Unix folks from the 1980’s. I see some familiar faces in there including Dennis Ritchie, and Eric Allman,
Warren Toomey, the maintainer of The Unix Heritage Society (TUHS), recently gave a great talk about the early years of Unix which includes mentions from several familiar faces! If you’re a fan of Unix and its history be sure to check out Warren’s work and TUHS.
I can’t resist posting this 1982 video from the AT&T archives which features many Faces participants from Bell Labs talking about Unix! Watch it all the way to the end as there’s a lot to love here.
