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+[[!tag tags/rockets]]
+In the early days of the collaboration between Bdale Garbee and Keith
+Packard that later became [Altus Metrum](http://altusmetrum.org), the
+software for [TeleMetrum](http://altusmetrum.org/TeleMetrum) was
+crafted as an application running on top of an existing open source
+RTOS. It didn't take long to discover that the RTOS was ill-suited to
+our needs, and Keith had to re-write various parts of it to make things
+fit in the memory available and work at all.
+
+Eventually, Bdale idly asked Keith how much of the RTOS he'd have to
+rewrite before it would make sense to just start over from scratch. Keith
+took that question seriously, and after disappearing for a day or so, the
+first code for [AltOS](http://altusmetrum.org/AltOS) was committed to
+[revision control](http://git.gag.com/?p=fw/altos;a=summary) on 12 April
+2009.
+
+Ten years later, AltOS runs on multiple processor architectures, and is
+at the heart of all [Altus Metrum](http://altusmetrum.org) products.