Apple's Lisa operating system to be released for free as open source

In an interesting turn of events, the Computer History Museum in California has decided release the Apple's legendary Lisa operating system for free. From now on, the operating system will be available as open source for everyone.

Apple had first announced the Lisa desktop computer on January 19, 1983. While officially, "Lisa" was the acronym for "Local Integrated Software Architecture", several reports suggest a different theory behind the naming. Reportedly, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' daughter was also called Lisa. Unfortunately, the Lisa Computer didn't have a good run, with just 10,000 units sold due to its high price tag of $9,999.

"We wanted to let everyone know the sources to the OS and applications were recovered, I converted them to Unix end of line conventions and spaces for Pascal tabs after recovering the files using Disk Image Chef, and they are with Apple for review," said Al Kossow, a software curator at the museum.

Notably, the Lisa Computer was one of the first personal computers which packed a graphical user interface (GUI) in a machine. Running on the operating system called Lisa, the computer was mainly aimed at the business users. The computer was equipped with a 5MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1MB of RAM, and a 5MB hard drive.

Apple had introduced additional versions of the Lisa computer at a lower price tag. However, the company ultimately had to stop its production just after a few years since the launch.

Coming to the features of the Lisa OS, it arrived with a protected memory which was enabled by a crude hardware circuit. Apple had put a lot of hard work in to make this OS as their Apple III SOS operating system failed to match up to the company's expectation.

The disk operating system on the Lisa Computer organized files in hierarchical directories. File system directories were able to make full use of the GUI "folders" with the Lisa. Lisa OS offered two main user modes: the Lisa Office System and the Workshop.

At that point of time, Lisa Office System was one of the most powerful systems around with advanced features. Later on, it was renamed as "7/7" since the system offered seven application programs including LisaWrite, LisaCalc, LisaDraw, LisaGraph, LisaProject, LisaList, and LisaTerminal.