Big changes are well underway in how software gets packaged and delivered. But even relatively modern takes on packaging goods and services for sale and consumption go back hundreds of years. In this talk, I'll take you on a whirlwind tour of packaging. What forms has packaging taken? What problems were being solved? What kinds of trade-offs need to be made? What lessons can we learn? How has packaging evolved from the utilitarian to the experiential?

And, critically, the trade-offs between prescriptive proprietary bundles and the sort of open-ended unrestricted choice that open source software can enable.