When this got released I really expected someone in the opensource community to run with it, but as far as I know no one has. Back around 1990 a Graphic designer that had his office n the same building as my mom worked in let me copy his Photoshop 1.x disks and nothing has ever compared to it for me. When will we get the linux port of Photoshop 1.0? I would love to see how it develops.
> 2. Restrictions. Except as expressly specified in this Agreement, you may not: (a) transfer, sublicense, lease, lend, rent or otherwise distribute the Software or Derivative Works to any third party; or (b) make the functionality of the Software or Derivative Works available to multiple users through any means, including, but not limited to, by uploading the Software to a network or file-sharing service or through any hosting, application services provider, service bureau, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or any other type of services. You acknowledge and agree that portions of the Software, including, but not limited to, the source code and the specific design and structure of individual modules or programs, constitute or contain trade secrets of Museum and its licensors.
It would be trivial to distribute a patch and a link to the original source. The patch can be distributed under whatever license the author wants. The resulting binary then becomes an unlicensed derivative work, the person who compiled it can use it however they want but are not allowed to legally distribute it.
My personal thoughts are: open-source software is great, probably the ideal condition, but I wish the general software distribution environment was not effectively all or nothing. open-source or compiled binary. I wish that protected-source software was considered a more valid distribution model. where you can compile, inspect fix and run the software but are not allowed to distribute it. Because trying to diagnose a problem when all you have is a compilation artifact is a huge pain. You see some enterprise software like this but for the most part it either open-source or no-source.
I am a bit surprised that there is no third party patch to get photoshop 1.0 to run under modern linux or windows, not for any real utility(at this point MS paint probably has better functionality), but for the fun of it. "This is what it feels like to drive photoshop 1"
I was talking about more than just a literal port, running with it is broader than just a literal port. I guess my general point is that I am disappointed that all these releases of historical code have so little to show for being released.
Edit: Disappointed is really not the right word but I am failing at finding the right word.
What would you expect to happen? Photoshop 1.0 is an almost unusably basic image editor by modern standards. It doesn't even have layers (they were introduced with Photoshop 3.0 4 years later). Even if the code was licensed in a manner that allowed distribution of derivative works (which it isn't), it's written in Apple's Pascal dialect from the mid-80s and uses a UI framework that's also from the mid-80s and only supports classic Mac OS. CHM didn't even release the code in a state that could be usable out of the box if you happen to have a 40 year old Macintosh sitting around. Here's a blog post showing how much work it took someone to compile it: http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...
I think Adobe decided to release the code because they knew it was only valuable from a historical standpoint and wouldn't let anyone actually compete with Photoshop. If you wanted to start a new image editor project from an existing codebase, it would be much easier to build off of something like Pinta: https://www.pinta-project.com/
1) these historical source code releases really are largely historical interest only. The original programs had constraints of memory and cpu speed that no modern use case does; the set of use cases for any particular task today is very different; what users expect and will tolerate in UI has shifted; available programming languages and tooling today are much better than the pragmatic options of decades past. If you were trying to build a Unix clone today there is no way you would want to start with the historical release of sixth edition. Even xv6 is only "inspired by" it, and gets away with that because of its teaching focus. Similarly if you wanted to build some kind of "streamlined lightweight photoshop-alike" then starting from scratch would be more sensible than starting with somebody else's legacy codebase.
2) In this specific case the licence agreement explicitly forbids basically any kind of "running with it" -- you cannot distribute any derivative work. So it's not surprising that nobody has done that.
I think Doom and similar old games are one of the few counterexamples, where people find value in being able to run the specific artefact on new platforms.
The appropriate word is "mistaken". It was explained that the licensing restrictions do not allow for a port, literal or otherwise. And "the linux port of Photoshop 1.0" is not something anyone wants when Linux already has far more capable photo editing software, and when much of this code is devoted to solving problems--e.g., interfacing with ancient hardware--that no longer exist.
Your disappointment seems to be a form of FOMO, but there isn't actually anything that you're MO here.
No, it’s source available but not open source. Open source requires at minimum the license to distribute modified copies. Popular open source licenses such as MIT [1] take this further:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
This makes the license transitive so that derived works are also MIT licensed.
Not quite. You need to include the MIT license text when distributing the software*, but the software you build doesn't need to also be MIT.
*: which unfortunately most users of MIT libraries do not follow as I often have an extremely difficult time finding the OSS licenses in their software distributions
MIT is not copyleft. The copyright notice must be included for those incorporated elements, but other downstream code it remains part of can be licensed however it wants.
AGPL and GPL are, on the other hand, as you describe.
Modifications can be licensed differently but that takes extra work. If I release a project with the MIT license at the top of each file and you download my project and make a 1-line change which you then redistribute, you need to explicitly mark that line as having a different license from the rest of the file otherwise it could be interpreted as also being MIT licensed.
You also could not legally remove the MIT license from those files and distribute with all rights reserved. My original granting of permission to modify and redistribute continues downstream.
> I mean, I can buy opensource.co.net but that doesn't mean I can tell you how you can use the term.
> Need more of a citation to understand that..?
This nonsense is not at all relevant to the claim for which I asked for a citation: "No, the original definition of open-source is source code that is visible (open) to the public."
Open Source is the same thing as Free Software, just with the different name. The term "Open Source" was coined later to emphasize the business benefits instead of the rights and freedom of the users, but the four freedoms of the Free Software Definition [1] and the ten criteria of the Open Source Definition [2] describe essentially the same thing.
What exactly does "open" mean when used as a qualifier for "source"?
The fact is that your claim "“open source” consists of two words which have meaning, but somehow doesn’t mean ==>that<== when combined into one phrase" is simply false, as there is no "that".
> Same with free software, in a way.
This is a much more supportable argument, but note the change in wording: "free software" is not the same as "free source". The latter suggests that one doesn't have to pay for the source, but says nothing about what one can do with the source or one's rights to software built from that source.
As for "free [as in freedom] software", I think there would have been less contention if RMS/FSF had called it "freed software" or "liberated software", and it would have been more consistent with their stated goals.
> Programmers really are terrible at naming things.
This is silly sophism based on one anecdote that you didn't even get right. Naming things well is hard, and names in software have conditions that don't exist in more casual circumstances. The reality is that good programmers put a lot of effort into choosing names and generally are better at it than the population at large.
You're close: they should have called it "freedom software". Which they wanted to, but couldn't, because it was trademarked. Source: I e-mailed richard stallman to ask why they didn't, he replied.
You're welcome to think what you want, but I've had to explain to enough juniors enough times what "open" actually means, so I know what people without any preconceived notions think it means, vs what experts on HN associate with the word after decades in the industry.
People who are new to the profession entirely, think that "open" means "you can look inside." Source: my life, unfortunately.
> ... that you didn't even get right.
FYI: this style of conversation won't get anyone to listen to you. And FWIW I was referencing the quip which I'm sure your familiar with. It was tongue in cheek.
> The reality is that good programmers put a lot of effort into choosing names and generally are better at it than the population at large.
> I've had to explain to enough juniors enough times what "open" actually means, so I know what people without any preconceived notions think it means, vs what experts on HN associate with the word after decades in the industry.
This is not relevant--it addresses a strawman and deflects from the actual claim you made and that I disputed.
> FYI: this style of conversation won't get anyone to listen to you.
Projection. I will in fact cease to respond to you.
> ... isn't that a No True Scotsman?
Obviously not. Failing to understand the difference between "real", "actual", "true" etc. which are the essence of the fallacy and valid qualifiers like "good" shows a fundamental failure to understand the point of the fallacy.
Even without a specific definition for "open source", I wouldn't consider source code with a restrictive license that doesn't allow you to do much with it to be "open".
I don't think this is a case of programmers being bad at things (although I get that you said that as a joke), I think it's much worse than that: This is some kind of weird mind-over-matter "if we believe it hard enough it'll come true" thing. Sort of an "if we beat everyone who says the emperor has no clothes, we can redefine 'clothes' to include 'the emperor's birthday suit'". Note that these people who are downvoting anyone who dares to say that "open source" isn't synonymous with the OSI definition never concede an inch to the notion that the words have a common-sense meaning and the OSI didn't invent the term (provable via internet archive). Because it's not about being right it's about changing reality to match what they wish were true.
* If a country doesn't have "closed borders" then many foreigners can visit if they follow certain rules around visas, purpose, and length of stay. If instead anyone can enter and live there with minimal restrictions we say it has "open borders".
* If a journal isn't "closed access" it is free to read. If you additionally have permissions to redistribute, reuse, etc then it's "open access".
* If an organization doesn't practice "closed meetings" then outsiders can attend meetings to observe. If it additionally provides advance notice, allows public attendance without permission, and records or publishes minutes, then it has “open meetings.”
* A club that doesn't have "closed membership" is open to admitting members. Anyone can join provided they meet relevant criteria (if any) then it's "open membership".
Who says it isn't? "closed source" doesn't have a formal definition, but can be arbitrarily defined as the antonym of open source, and when people use the term that's usually what they mean.
And that has nothing to do with whether someone can be "blamed" for ignoring the actual meaning of a term with a formal definition.
I understand it was a very unique and powerful piece of software in 1990 but why would it be such a game changer to have the 1.0 running on Linux today?
You could try having an LLM port it to Linux :) As an aside I was always (well, no longer) hoping that Photoshop gets ported to Linux because at least an IRIX port existed, so there has to be some source code with X11 or whatever library code.
Photoshop was ported to IRIX using Latitude, Quorum Software's implementation of Mac OS System 7. Apple later acquired the Quorum's code and it became part of Carbon.
Look I understand it's crazy, but it took one small prompt and I came back a half hour later expecting it to have given up, but instead I saw exactly what you'd expect to see in my browser.
Here is the prompt I gave it:
"Use wasm and go and a 68000 emulator to get the Photoshop 1.0.1 software at https://d1yx3ys82bpsa0.cloudfront.net/source/photoshop-v.1.0... to run correctly. You should not require an operating system, instead implement the system calls that Photoshop makes in the context of wasm. Because Go compiles to wasm, you might try writing some kind of translator from the pascal to go and then compile for wasm. Or you might be able to find such a thing and use it."
You can give it a try yourself, or contact me for a private link to it (see the CHM license for why I can't make it public).
I've had a chance to review the code now. It used HTML/CSS/JS for the UI, and calls into the Go/wasm code where the filters are implemented.
When a filter is implemented half in Pascal (setup and loop over the rows) and half in assembly (each row) Claude did it all in Go, but the structure in Go is the same: one entry point for setup and iterating on rows, and one function (ported from the assembly) to process each row.
(As for the resource fork, it just reimplemented the UI in HTML. There's not enough info in the transcript of it's thinking to know if it read the resource file and understood it, or if it used a general understanding of what was in Photoshop, from training data, to do it.)
My mind is blown. I keep trying to find evidence that it just copied this from someplace, but I can't see how.
Wow, that makes so much sense - thank you! It sounds like it essentially "vibed up" the parts it didn't understand, which is amazing.
Just as an experiment, I fed the resource fork to GPT-5.2 to see whether it could render the windows/dialogs in the resource fork - it did a fairly okay job. I think the fundamental limit it ran against (and acknowledges) is that lot of Mac's classic look and feel was defined programmatically, literally, down to calls to RoundRect(...).
