Z:gnu-www-ja-rms-nyu-2001-transcript--7406cb-But then our community was des/en

But then our community was destroyed by a series of calamities that happened to it. Ultimately it was wiped out. Ultimately, the PDP-10 computer which we used for all our work was discontinued. And you know, our system &mdash; the Incompatible Timesharing System &mdash; was written starting in the '60's, so it was written in assembler language. That's what you used to write an operating system in the '60's. So, of course, assembler language is for one particular computer architecture; if that gets discontinued, all your work turns into dust &mdash; it's useless. And that's what happened to us. The 20 years or so of work of our community turned into dust.