iOS developers new to the platform are completely (and thankfully) unaware of its rocky start during its initial years. The first iPhone was announced on January 9th, 2007, and was released in the United States on June 29th that year. The iPhone SDK was announced by Steve Jobs in October 2007, and released in March 2008. But even before the official SDK was first announced, people were already "jailbreaking" the device, and thereby making applications for the iPhone. First-generation iPhone and iPad developers will surely chuckle when reading the words "PwnageTool," "JailbreakMe," and the name of the first App Store, also known as "Cydia."

We are told that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. This is certainly true of the history of computing, at least as far as its telling is concerned.

In the 2008 book "Dreams That Glitter", telling the story of the English pop group Girls Aloud, one of its members, the late Sarah Harding, said: “I’ve got a t-shirt that says ‘Well-behaved women don’t make history’. Funny how the stylist gave that to me…”

It would be inappropriate to have an issue on software licensing without including one of the people whose work has done most to shape the topic. Somehow we managed not to mention him by name in the issue on Free, Libre, and Open Source Software. Well, today we correct that.