This is written as if the DECUS tape sharing didn't happen. As if source code was not routinely free with the hardware and as of the tertiary education norm of writing your own OS in your own idiom or language didn't happen.

I feel like I must have lived in an alternate universe, another timeline. My entire online life from 1974 has been on free software, from the EMAS/IMP system and Fortran/Algol onward.

While I dont disagree that a lot of what he claims is technically true, I feel as if he might as well have also said that there was no electricity before open source.

My dad wrote cobol on on punch cards and as sure as rain, those shoe boxes of cards got shared.

My first computer came with a compiler and real documentation which was actually useful. Games could be loaded from cassette tapes that you could freely share and copy.

I'm not saying open source has not been a huge boon, but there were also plenty of great closed source programs and advances that have nothing to do with open source.

Yes, even on the first home computers it was quite common to get hobbyist software in source code form. Open source software collaboration largely independent of geographical location only became feasible with the advent of large scale networks like the FIDONET or, in an academical context, the early internet. It really took off when home internet access became wide spread. The modern OSS paradigm is a function of digital communication.