Comment by PaulDavisThe1st

> "Open source" barely existed as a concept then,

I was introduced to "free software" and the GPL in 1986, as a PhD student at the European Molecular Biology Lab (Heidelberg).

Your historical revisionism doesn't sit well. Yes, "open source" came later because some people didn't like the specifics of the GPL and wanted a term that could describe "source available" software under a variety of license. But by 1998, I'd already been contributing to GPL'ed projects for more than a decade.

I'm well aware of the lack of free/libre alternatives to Flash. But that wasn't my point at all. I'm not saying that people failed by choosing Flash over some (mythical) free/libre alternative. I'm saying they failed by choosing Flash, period.

Before proprietary software, there were almost no creative tools that were proprietary. Nobody bought proprietary paint, or proprietary paint brushes, or proprietary table saws, or propriety anything. The software showed up, and everyone was so gaga about what you could do with it that they just forget about the fact that XYZ Corp. controlled the tools 100%, and dived in. There were people warning them, but those people were ignored.