When writers at PC World compiled a list on the worst OSes ever,
my first impressions were as follows:
- Richard Stallman can't make OSes
- Microsoft wasn't always successful either
While I still have a preference for the more Hacker-friendly
Unix, and that Unix comes in the form of Slackware, using GNU
software huddled around the Linux kernel, I have grown to
appreciate ITS for what it is: a social platform.
I remember reading the documentation for tilde.club, specifically
the article on security. It mentioned that the home directory is
publicly readable by others by default. It seemed like an obvious
security blunder to me initially, but then I grew to appreciate
this. SDF doesn't seem to do this, however. Other pubnixes I have
been on definitely do have this behavior, however.
I don't know if ITS is the earliest in the modern usage of the
term `social platform', but if SDF and other pubnixes such as
those on the tildeverse count as a social network, then I'm
pretty sure an ITS installation also counts as such as well. This
definitely makes it a contender for the title, at the very least.
In fact, ITS was a reaction to the security features of Multics,
the ancestor of Unix. ITS's name even reflects this: it stands
for Incompatible Timesharing System, a play on CTSS (Compatible
Time Sharing System), itself Multics's ancestor.
The design of ITS had some pretty important differences:
- Passwords didn't exist until MIT higher-ups started requiring
them. This actually lead Richard Stallman to, when others
started using passwords, to crack into the passwords. Not to
cause trouble (not inherently, anyways), but to encourage
others to reject passwords as he had.
- Implemented a crash program to discourage curious Hackers from
figuring out how to crash the system.
- World editable files, which honestly is the strangest thing to
my modern sensibilities.
- Commands that encouraged communication. There was some sort of
instant messaging (think `talk' or `write' on Unix), as well as
`SHOUT', which would send a message to all online users (like
`wall' on Unix).
- Users can find other processes that other users are using
(which you can do on Unix), and kill them (which can't be done
on Unix unless you're root). The killing program was called
`JEDGAR' after FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and it was later
disabled, though it still appeared to work.
- Guests were allowed on the system, and even sometimes straight
up invited to have an actual account on the system.
- System security didn't really exist. However, since ITS was
never meant to used for anything besides information that was
meant to be freely available, this was not a problem.
Now, one can talk about how many important programs got their
start on ITS such as Emacs (which I'm using to write this,
actually, if the org syntax didn't give it away), Macsyma (the
ancestor to MATLAB and other such languages), Lisp, Zork, and Mac
Hack VI, the best chess program of its day. However, while thse
are great things (and I absolutely see value in Emacs to this
day, as do most founders of the FLOSS movements), to me, ITS
represents a form of sociality that may be hard to replicate on
the Internet.
This social environment explains why Richard Stallman felt a
desire to continue it through the Free Software movement. The
wiki movement also apparently was inspired by the design of ITS
according to Wikipedia, though I could find no source proper on
this. I can absolutely see the similarities, and if I were to try
and do something similar, I'd probably start a wiki. Maybe even
make one that uses org syntax. :-P
Regardless, ITS stands as perhaps one of the most interesting
OSes ever made, as it was not meant to keep your files secure but
rather meant to facilitate communication.
