Z:gnu-www-ja-ough-interview--7d6fd0-While working as a =26ldquo;syst/en

While working as a &ldquo;system hacker&rdquo; in MIT's AI Lab (i.e. a member of the team developing the Lab's own operating system) he experienced the profound change that overtook the software industry. Up until that point the general practice was for people to freely share, modify and reuse operating system software developed for the machines of the day. In the 1970's the software industry stopped distributing the source code of these programs, making it impossible for computer users to study and modify them. Furthermore new copyright laws made it illegal to do so.