If hackers laughed when they first encountered the KL-10, their laughter quickly died when they encountered Twenex. Not only did Twenex boast built-in security, but the system’s software engineers had designed the tools and applications with the security system in mind. What once had been a cat-and-mouse game over passwords in the case of the Laboratory for Computer Science’s security system, now became an out-and-out battle over system management. System administrators argued that without security, the Oz system was more prone to accidental crashes. Hackers argued that crashes could be better prevented by overhauling the source code. Unfortunately, the number of hackers with the time and inclination to perform this sort of overhaul had dwindled to the point that the system-administrator argument prevailed.
Cadging passwords and deliberately crashing the system in order to glean evidence from the resulting wreckage, Stallman successfully foiled the system administrators’ attempt to assert control. After one foiled “coup d’etat”, Stallman issued an alert to the entire AI staff.[3]
“There has been another attempt to seize power”, Stallman wrote. “So far, the aristocratic forces have been defeated”. To protect his identity, Stallman signed the message “Radio Free OZ”.
The disguise was a thin one at best. By 1982, Stallman’s aversion to passwords and secrecy had become so well known that users outside the AI Laboratory were using his account as a stepping stone to the ARPAnet, the research-funded computer network that would serve as a foundation for today’s Internet. One such “tourist” during the early 1980s was Don Hopkins, a California programmer who learned through the hacking grapevine that all an outsider needed to do to gain access to MIT’s vaunted ITS system was to log in under the initials RMS and enter the same three-letter monogram when the system requested a password.
“I’m eternally grateful that MIT let me and many other people use their computers for free”, says Hopkins. “It meant a lot to many people”.
This so-called “tourist” policy, which had been openly tolerated by MIT management during the ITS years,[6] fell by the wayside when Oz became the lab’s primary link to the ARPAnet. At first, Stallman continued his policy of repeating his login ID as a password so outside users could follow in his footsteps. Over time, however, the Oz’s fragility prompted administrators to bar outsiders who, through sheer accident or malicious intent, might bring down the system. When those same administrators eventually demanded that Stallman stop publishing his password, Stallman, citing personal ethics, refused to do so and ceased using the Oz system altogether.[3]
“[When] passwords first appeared at the MIT AI Lab I [decided] to follow my belief that there should be no passwords”, Stallman would later say. “Because I don’t believe that it’s really desirable to have security on a computer, I shouldn’t be willing to help uphold the security regime”.[3]
Stallman’s refusal to bow before the great and powerful Oz symbolized the growing tension between hackers and AI Lab management during the early 1980s. This tension paled in comparison to the conflict that raged within the hacker community itself. By the time the KL-10 arrived, the hacker community had already divided into two camps. The first centered around a software company called Symbolics, Inc. The second centered around Symbolics chief rival, Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI). Both companies were in a race to market the Lisp Machine, a device built to take full advantage of the Lisp programming language.
Created by artificial-intelligence research pioneer John McCarthy, a MIT artificial-intelligence researcher during the late 1950s, Lisp is an elegant language well-suited for programs charged with heavy-duty sorting and processing. The language’s name is a shortened version of LISt Processing. Following McCarthy’s departure to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT hackers refined the language into a local dialect dubbed MACLISP. The “MAC” stood for Project MAC, the DARPA-funded research project that gave birth to the AI Lab and the Laboratory for Computer Science. Led by AI Lab arch-hacker Richard Greenblatt, AI Lab programmers during the 1970s built up an entire Lisp-based operating system, dubbed the Lisp Machine operating system. By 1980, the Lisp Machine project had generated two commercial spin-offs. Symbolics was headed by Russell Noftsker, a former AI Lab administrator, and Lisp Machines, Inc., was headed by Greenblatt.
The Lisp Machine software was hacker-built, meaning it was owned by MIT but available for anyone to copy as per hacker custom. Such a system limited the marketing advantage of any company hoping to license the software from MIT and market it as unique. To secure an advantage, and to bolster the aspects of the operating system that customers might consider attractive, the companies recruited various AI Lab hackers and set them working on various components of the Lisp Machine operating system outside the auspices of the AI Lab.
The most aggressive in this strategy was Symbolics. By the end of 1980, the company had hired 14 AI Lab staffers as part-time consultants to develop its version of the Lisp Machine. Apart from Stallman, the rest signed on to help LMI.[7]
At first, Stallman accepted both companies’ attempt to commercialize the Lisp machine, even though it meant more work for him. Both licensed the Lisp Machine OS source code from MIT, and it was Stallman’s job to update the lab’s own Lisp Machine to keep pace with the latest innovations. Although Symbolics’ license with MIT gave Stallman the right to review, but not copy, Symbolics’ source code, Stallman says a “gentleman’s agreement” between Symbolics management and the AI Lab made it possible to borrow attractive snippets in traditional hacker fashion.
On March 16, 1982, a date Stallman remembers well because it was his birthday, Symbolics executives decided to end this gentlemen’s agreement. The move was largely strategic. LMI, the primary competition in the Lisp Machine marketplace, was essentially using a copy of the AI Lab Lisp Machine. Rather than subsidize the development of a market rival, Symbolics executives elected to enforce the letter of the license. If the AI Lab wanted its operating system to stay current with the Symbolics operating system, the lab would have to switch over to a Symbolics machine and sever its connection to LMI.
As the person responsible for keeping up the lab’s Lisp Machine, Stallman was incensed. Viewing this announcement as an “ultimatum”, he retaliated by disconnecting Symbolics’ microwave communications link to the laboratory. He then vowed never to work on a Symbolics machine and pledged his immediate allegiance to LMI. “The way I saw it, the AI Lab was a neutral country, like Belgium in World War I”, Stallman says. “If Germany invades Belgium, Belgium declares war on Germany and sides with Britain and France”.
The circumstances of the so-called “Symbolics War” of 1982-1983 depend heavily on the source doing the telling. When Symbolics executives noticed that their latest features were still appearing in the AI Lab Lisp Machine and, by extension, the LMI Lisp machine, they installed a “spy” program on Stallman’s computer terminal. Stallman says he was rewriting the features from scratch, taking advantage of the license’s review clause but also taking pains to make the source code as different as possible. Symbolics executives argued otherwise and took their case to MIT administration. According to 1994 book,
Whatever the outcome, the bickering solidified Stallman’s resolve. With no source code to review, Stallman
