History

Automatic file versioning is a very handy tool for reducing user errors and confusion, but not many people know this because only one versioning filesystem has been implemented in production. The OpenVMS ↗ operating system and its versioned filesystem was reckoned to have ten million users or more ↗ in 2004 across half a million or so VMS clusters. I was one of those users, and I have wanted versioning on my operating systems ever since. User file versioning been reinvented many times in free software but never more than short-lived experiments. In today’s world of cloud computing, AI and mobile devices this feature feels more relevant than ever. ...

In responding to a recent security problem I had to consider the idea of intent in computer software, so I looked to see what Margaret Hamilton ↗ has to say. Hamilton proved her ideas spectacularly during the first Apollo moon landing in 1969. A hardware failure generated unexpected errors ↗ , but the software coped by running the highest-priority tasks despite the barrage of errors and prevented an abort just seconds before landing on the surface. I eventually found two 1994 articles of hers in Electronic Design magazine: one explaining her Development Before the Fact philosophy , and one describing the tools built from it . After discussion with the current magazine editor, I was able to clean up the scanned text of both and document Hamilton’s prescience. ...

When Linux was a Struggling Challenger 💡 Key Point This is a 2026 restoration of my (Dan Shearer’s) 1998-2001 guide, preserved at archive.org ↗ . Links have been updated to point to the archives where possible. In 1999 I joined my first startup, Linuxcare in San Francisco. The Linuxcare story is a quintessential United States dot-com bubble narrative, featuring a famous venture capital fund, massive growth, a failed IPO, and a fancy new ex-IBM CEO resigning under a cloud. Founded in 1998, Linuxcare aimed to be the “0800 number for Linux”. So close! ...

I participated in many battles directly against Microsoft in the Ballmer era, 1998-2014. Every Samba feature release seemed to further anger Microsoft. Copyright and then especially patents were weaponised, as well as well-funded hit teams aimed at spreading confusion and intimidating their own (Microsoft’s!) customers. In the Nadella era from 2014-present, Microsoft and other tech giants are using even more brutal ways (paracopyright, technical protection measures and the Unitary Patent System), to coerce citizens and governments. ...

This timeline covers the period when Microsoft decided free software and Samba in particular was an existential threat. Microsoft often buried competitors in expensive litigation, but turned out to be much more difficult to bury open source like Samba . This was the Ballmer era, named after the then-CEO, and the history of Samba’s triumphs feels highly relevant to 2026 where other giant companies seek to prevent the rise of open source competitors. ...