History of free software
Encyclopedia
This is a timeline-style look at how free and open-source software has evolved and existed from its inception.
The phrase "free software
" refers to software that is liberally licensed, allowing the end user more freedoms than conventional-software licences. This is not to be confused with software which is available to the end user at no cost, which is known as freeware
. Free software may be distributed with or without charge.
Advocates of free software distinguish themselves from those of open-source software
. However, as defined by the Free Software Foundation
and Open Source Initiative
, respectively, the terms describe nearly identical sets of software.
In the early years of automobile development, a group of capital monopolists
owned the rights to a 2-cycle gasoline engine patent originally filed by George B. Selden. By controlling this patent, they were able to monopolize the industry and force car manufacturers to adhere to their demands, or risk a lawsuit. In 1911, independent automaker Henry Ford
won a challenge to the Selden patent. The result was that the Selden patent became virtually worthless and a new association (which would eventually become the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association) was formed. The new association instituted a cross-licensing agreement among all US auto manufacturers: although each company would develop technology and file patents, these patents were shared openly and without the exchange of money between all the manufacturers. By the time the US entered World War 2, 92 Ford patents and 515 patents from other companies were being shared between these manufacturers, without any exchange of money (or lawsuits).
Software communities that can now be compared with today's free-software community existed for a long time before the free-software movement and the term "free software". According to Richard Stallman
, the software-sharing community at MIT
existed for "many years" before he got involved in 1971. In the 1950s and into the 1960s almost all software was produced by computer science
academics and corporate researchers working in collaboration. As such, it was generally distributed under the principles of openness and co-operation long established in the fields of academia
, and was not seen as a commodity in itself. At this time, source code
, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software itself because users frequently modified the software themselves, because it would not run on different hardware or OS without modification, and also to fix bugs or add new functionality.
An IBM
mainframe operating system, Airline Control Program (ACP), from 1967 reportedly distributed its source code in a way very similar to the way free software is now. User groups such as that of the IBM 701
, called SHARE
, and that of Digital Equipment Corporation
(DEC), called DECUS
were formed to facilitate the exchange of software.
Thus in this era, software was free in a sense, not because of any concerted effort by software users or developers, but rather because of necessity and a differing academic culture.
By the late 1960s change was coming: as operating system
s and programming language
compiler
s evolved, software production costs were dramatically increasing. A growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturers' bundled software products (the cost of bundled products was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of manufacturer's software to be bundled with hardware product costs. In the United States vs. IBM
antitrust suit, filed January 17, 1969, the U.S. government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive. While some software continued to come at no cost, there was a growing amount of software that was for sale only under restrictive licences.
Very similar to open standards, researchers with access to Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) used a process called Request for Comments
to develop telecommunication network protocols. This collaborative process of the 1960s led to the birth of the Internet
in 1969.
In the 1970s AT&T distributed early versions of UNIX at no cost to government and academic researchers, but these versions did not come with permission to redistribute or to distribute modified versions, and were thus not free software
in the modern meaning of the phrase.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, computer vendors and software-only companies began routinely charging for software licences, marketing it as "Program Products" and imposing legal restrictions on new software developments, now seen as assets, through copyright
s, trademark
s, and leasing contracts. In 1976 Bill Gates
signaled the change of the times when he wrote his now-famous Open Letter to Hobbyists
, sending out the message that what hackers called "sharing" was, in his words, "stealing". In 1979, AT&T, for example, began to enforce its restrictive licences when the company decided it might profit by selling the Unix system.
Some free software which was developed in the 70s and early 80s which continues to be used includes SPICE
, TeX
(developed by Donald Knuth
), and the X Window System
. The W Window System
provided a start for the X Window System, but differed in several fundamental ways. Development of the X Window System was concurrent with the GNU project, but GNU was in no way responsible for the X Window System.
networks in the 1980s. This was sometimes a necessity; software written in BASIC
and other interpreted language
s could only be distributed as source code, and much of it was freeware. When people began gathering such source code, and setting up boards specifically to discuss its modification, this was a de-facto open source system.
One of the most obvious examples of this is one of the most-used BBS systems and networks, WWIV
, developed initially in BASIC by Wayne Bell
. A culture of "modding" his software, and distributing the mods, grew up so extensively that when the software was ported to first Pascal
, then C++
, its source code continued to be distributed to registered users, who would share mods and compile their own versions of the software. This may have contributed to its being a dominant system and network, despite being outside the Fidonet
umbrella that was shared by so many other BBS makers.
Meanwhile, the advent of Usenet
and UUCPNet in the early 1980s further connected the programming community and provided a simpler way for programmers to share their software and contribute to software others had written.
As the Internet grew, open source-style software progressed to more advanced presentation and sharing forms through the World Wide Web
(of which gopher was a precursor). There are now many Web sites, organizations and businesses that promote the open-source sharing of everything from computer code to mechanics of improving a product, technique, or medical advancement.
launched the GNU Project
to write a complete operating system free from constraints on use of its source code. Particular incidents that motivated this include a case where an annoying printer couldn't be fixed because the source code was withheld from users. Stallman also published the GNU Manifesto
, in 1985, to outline the GNU project
's purpose and explain the importance of free software. Another probable inspiration for the GNU project and its manifesto
was a disagreement between Stallman and Symbolics, Inc.
over MIT's access to updates Symbolics had made to its Lisp machine, which was based on MIT code.
Soon after the launch, he coined the term "free software
" and founded the Free Software Foundation
to promote the concept and a free software definition
was published in February 1986.
In 1989, the first version of the GNU General Public License
was published. A slightly updated version 2 was published in 1991.
In 1989, some GNU developers formed the company Cygnus Solutions
.
The GNU project's kernel, later called "GNU Hurd
", was continually delayed, but most other components were completed by 1991. Some of these, especially the GNU Compiler Collection
, had become market leaders in their own right. The GNU Debugger
and GNU Emacs were also notable successes.
, started by Linus Torvalds
, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. The licence wasn't a free-software licence, but with version 0.12 in February 1992, Torvalds relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License
. Much like Unix, Torvalds' kernel attracted the attention of volunteer programmers.
Until this point, the GNU project's lack of a kernel meant that no complete free-software operating systems existed. The development of Torvalds' kernel closed that last gap. The combination of the almost-finished GNU operating system and the Linux kernel made the first complete free-software operating system.
Among Linux distributions, Debian GNU/Linux, begun by Ian Murdock
in 1993, is noteworthy for being explicitly committed to the GNU and FSF principles of free software. The Debian developers' principles are expressed in the Debian Social Contract
. Since its inception, the Debian project has been closely linked with the FSF, and in fact was sponsored by the FSF for a year in 1994–1995. In 1997, former Debian project leader Bruce Perens
also helped found Software in the Public Interest
, a non-profit funding and support organization for various free-software projects.
GNU/Linux remains free software under the terms of the GNU GPL, and many businesses offer customized Linux-based products, or distributions, with commercial support. The naming remains controversial
. Referring to the complete system as simply "Linux" is common usage. However, the Free Software Foundation
, and many others, advocate the use of the term "GNU/Linux", saying that it is a more accurate name for the whole operating system.
lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993, FreeBSD
and NetBSD
(both derived from 386BSD
) were released as free software. OpenBSD
forked
from NetBSD in 1995. Other more recent forks also exist, including Apple's Darwin OS
.
became the most-used web-server software – a title that still holds as of 2010. Systems based on a common "stack" of software with the Linux kernel at the base, Apache providing web services, the MySQL
database engine for data storage, and the PHP
programming language for providing dynamic pages, came to be known as LAMP
systems.
published The Cathedral and the Bazaar
, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and free-software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998 and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator
Internet suite as free software
. This code is today the basis for Mozilla Firefox
and Thunderbird
.
Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring free-software principles and benefits to the commercial-software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the free-software movement to emphasize the business potential of the sharing of source code.
The label “open source” was adopted by some people in the free software
movement at a strategy session held at Palo Alto, California
, in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator
. The group of individuals at the session included Christine Peterson who suggested “open source”, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin
, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann
and Eric S. Raymond
. Over the next week, Raymond and others worked on spreading the word. Linus Torvalds
gave an all-important sanction the following day. Phil Hughes offered a pulpit in Linux Journal
. Richard Stallman
, pioneer of the free software movement, flirted with adopting the term, but changed his mind. Those people who adopted the term used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to free themselves of the ideological and confrontational connotations of the term "free software". Netscape released its source code under the Netscape Public License
and later under the Mozilla Public License
.
The term was given a big boost at an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher Tim O'Reilly
. Originally titled the “Freeware Summit” and later known as the “Open Source Summit”, The event brought together the leaders of many of the most important free and open-source projects, including Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall
, Brian Behlendorf
, Eric Allman
, Guido van Rossum
, Michael Tiemann
, Paul Vixie
, Jamie Zawinski
of Netscape, and Eric Raymond. At that meeting, the confusion caused by the name free software was brought up. Tiemann argued for “sourceware” as a new term, while Raymond argued for “open source.” The assembled developers took a vote, and the winner was announced at a press conference that evening. Five days later, Raymond made the first public call to the free software community to adopt the new term. The Open Source Initiative
was formed shortly thereafter.
However, Richard Stallman and the FSF harshly objected to the new organization's approach. They felt that, with its narrow focus on source code, OSI was burying the philosophical and social values of free software and hiding the issue of computer users' freedom. Stallman still maintained, however, that users of each term were allies in the fight against proprietary software.
In August 1999, Sun Microsystems
released the StarOffice
office suite as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License
. The free-software version was renamed OpenOffice.org
, and coexists with StarOffice.
Starting in the early 2000s, a number of companies began to publish a portion of their source code to claim they were open source, while keeping key parts closed. This led to the development of the now widely used terms free open-source software and commercial open-source software
to distinguish between truly open and hybrid forms of open source.
X has become the de facto window system in free software.
KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich
. At the time, he was troubled by the inconsistencies in UNIX applications
. He proposed a new desktop environment
. He also wanted to make this desktop easy to use. His initial Usenet
post spurred a lot of interest.
Ettrich chose to use the Qt toolkit
for the KDE project. At the time, Qt did not use a free-software licence. Members of the GNU project became concerned with the use of such a toolkit for building a free-software desktop environment. In August 1997, two projects were started in response to KDE: the Harmony toolkit
(a free replacement for the Qt libraries) and GNOME (a different desktop without Qt and built entirely on top of free software). GTK+
was chosen as the base of GNOME in place of the Qt toolkit.
In November 1998, the Qt toolkit was licensed under the free/open-source Q Public License
(QPL) but debate continued about compatibility with the GNU General Public License
(GPL). In September 2000, Trolltech
made the Unix
version of the Qt libraries available under the GPL, in addition to the QPL, which has eliminated the concerns of the Free Software Foundation
.
Both KDE and GNOME now participate in freedesktop.org
, an effort to standardize Unix desktop interoperability, although there is still some competition between them.
released the Java Development Kit as OpenJDK
under the GNU General Public License. Part of the class library (4% of it) could not be released as open source due to them being licensed from other parties and were included as binary plugs. Because of this, in June 2007, Red Hat
launched IcedTea
to resolve the encumbered components with the equivalents from GNU Classpath
implementation. Since the release, most of the encumbrances have been solved, leaving only the audio engine code and colour management system (the latter is to be resolved using LittleCMS
).
The phrase "free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
" refers to software that is liberally licensed, allowing the end user more freedoms than conventional-software licences. This is not to be confused with software which is available to the end user at no cost, which is known as freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
. Free software may be distributed with or without charge.
Advocates of free software distinguish themselves from those of open-source software
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
. However, as defined by the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
and Open Source Initiative
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...
, respectively, the terms describe nearly identical sets of software.
Early Information Sharing
The concept of open source and the free sharing of technological information existed long before computers. For example, cooking recipes have been shared since the beginning of human culture. Open source can pertain to businesses and to computers, software and technology.In the early years of automobile development, a group of capital monopolists
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
owned the rights to a 2-cycle gasoline engine patent originally filed by George B. Selden. By controlling this patent, they were able to monopolize the industry and force car manufacturers to adhere to their demands, or risk a lawsuit. In 1911, independent automaker Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
won a challenge to the Selden patent. The result was that the Selden patent became virtually worthless and a new association (which would eventually become the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association) was formed. The new association instituted a cross-licensing agreement among all US auto manufacturers: although each company would develop technology and file patents, these patents were shared openly and without the exchange of money between all the manufacturers. By the time the US entered World War 2, 92 Ford patents and 515 patents from other companies were being shared between these manufacturers, without any exchange of money (or lawsuits).
Software communities that can now be compared with today's free-software community existed for a long time before the free-software movement and the term "free software". According to Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
, the software-sharing community at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
existed for "many years" before he got involved in 1971. In the 1950s and into the 1960s almost all software was produced by computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
academics and corporate researchers working in collaboration. As such, it was generally distributed under the principles of openness and co-operation long established in the fields of academia
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
, and was not seen as a commodity in itself. At this time, source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software itself because users frequently modified the software themselves, because it would not run on different hardware or OS without modification, and also to fix bugs or add new functionality.
An IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
mainframe operating system, Airline Control Program (ACP), from 1967 reportedly distributed its source code in a way very similar to the way free software is now. User groups such as that of the IBM 701
IBM 701
The IBM 701, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was announced to the public on April 29, 1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer...
, called SHARE
SHARE (computing)
SHARE Inc. is a volunteer-run user group for IBM mainframe computers that was founded in 1955 by Los Angeles-area IBM 701 users. It evolved into a forum for exchanging technical information about programming languages, operating systems, database systems, and user experiences for enterprise users...
, and that of Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
(DEC), called DECUS
DECUS
The Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society was an independent computer user group related to Digital Equipment Corporation.The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community...
were formed to facilitate the exchange of software.
Thus in this era, software was free in a sense, not because of any concerted effort by software users or developers, but rather because of necessity and a differing academic culture.
By the late 1960s change was coming: as operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s and programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
s evolved, software production costs were dramatically increasing. A growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturers' bundled software products (the cost of bundled products was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of manufacturer's software to be bundled with hardware product costs. In the United States vs. IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
antitrust suit, filed January 17, 1969, the U.S. government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive. While some software continued to come at no cost, there was a growing amount of software that was for sale only under restrictive licences.
Very similar to open standards, researchers with access to Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) used a process called Request for Comments
Request for Comments
In computer network engineering, a Request for Comments is a memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.Through the Internet Society, engineers and...
to develop telecommunication network protocols. This collaborative process of the 1960s led to the birth of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
in 1969.
In the 1970s AT&T distributed early versions of UNIX at no cost to government and academic researchers, but these versions did not come with permission to redistribute or to distribute modified versions, and were thus not free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
in the modern meaning of the phrase.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, computer vendors and software-only companies began routinely charging for software licences, marketing it as "Program Products" and imposing legal restrictions on new software developments, now seen as assets, through copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
s, trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
s, and leasing contracts. In 1976 Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
signaled the change of the times when he wrote his now-famous Open Letter to Hobbyists
Open Letter to Hobbyists
The Open Letter to Hobbyists was an open letter written by Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, to early personal computer hobbyists, in which Gates expresses dismay at the rampant copyright infringement taking place in the hobbyist community, particularly with regard to his company's...
, sending out the message that what hackers called "sharing" was, in his words, "stealing". In 1979, AT&T, for example, began to enforce its restrictive licences when the company decided it might profit by selling the Unix system.
Some free software which was developed in the 70s and early 80s which continues to be used includes SPICE
SPICE
SPICE is a general-purpose, open source analog electronic circuit simulator.It is a powerful program that is used in integrated circuit and board-level design to check the integrity of circuit designs and to predict circuit behavior.- Introduction :Unlike board-level designs composed of discrete...
, TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
(developed by Donald Knuth
Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.He is the author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. Knuth has been called the "father" of the analysis of algorithms...
), and the X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
. The W Window System
W Window System
The W window system is a windowing system and precursor in name and concept to the modern X window system.W was originally developed at Stanford University by Paul Asente and Brian Reid for the V operating system...
provided a start for the X Window System, but differed in several fundamental ways. Development of the X Window System was concurrent with the GNU project, but GNU was in no way responsible for the X Window System.
Online software sharing
In a foreshadowing of the Internet "open source" revolution, software with source code included became available on BBSBBS
-Technologies:* Bulletin Board System, a computer that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line or telnet connection* BIOS Boot Specification, a system firmware specification related initial program load...
networks in the 1980s. This was sometimes a necessity; software written in BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
and other interpreted language
Interpreted language
Interpreted language is a programming language in which programs are 'indirectly' executed by an interpreter program. This can be contrasted with a compiled language which is converted into machine code and then 'directly' executed by the host CPU...
s could only be distributed as source code, and much of it was freeware. When people began gathering such source code, and setting up boards specifically to discuss its modification, this was a de-facto open source system.
One of the most obvious examples of this is one of the most-used BBS systems and networks, WWIV
WWIV
WWIV was a popular brand of bulletin board system software from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. The modifiable source code allowed a sysop to customize the main BBS program for their particular needs and aesthetics...
, developed initially in BASIC by Wayne Bell
Wayne Bell
Wayne Bell was the creator of the WWIV BBS system. The First WWIV BBS went online in Los Angeles, CA in December 1984. His own BBS came to be named Amber, node 1 of the WWIVNet BBS network....
. A culture of "modding" his software, and distributing the mods, grew up so extensively that when the software was ported to first Pascal
Pascal
Pascal or PASCAL may refer to:-People:* Pascal , a French given name* Pascal , a French and Italian surname* Adam Pascal , American actor and singer, best known for his role of Roger Davis in the Broadway musical Rent* Blaise Pascal , French mathematician and philosopher* Cleo Paskal, environmental...
, then C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
, its source code continued to be distributed to registered users, who would share mods and compile their own versions of the software. This may have contributed to its being a dominant system and network, despite being outside the Fidonet
FidoNet
FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...
umbrella that was shared by so many other BBS makers.
Meanwhile, the advent of Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
and UUCPNet in the early 1980s further connected the programming community and provided a simpler way for programmers to share their software and contribute to software others had written.
The Internet
Open source on the Internet began when the Internet was relatively primitive, with software distributed via UUCP, Usenet, and irc, and gopher. Linux, for example, was first widely distributed by posts to comp.os.linux on the Usenet, which is also where its development was discussed. Linux became the archetype for organized open source development, in general.As the Internet grew, open source-style software progressed to more advanced presentation and sharing forms through the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
(of which gopher was a precursor). There are now many Web sites, organizations and businesses that promote the open-source sharing of everything from computer code to mechanics of improving a product, technique, or medical advancement.
GNU and FSF's early years
In 1983, Richard StallmanRichard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
launched the GNU Project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
to write a complete operating system free from constraints on use of its source code. Particular incidents that motivated this include a case where an annoying printer couldn't be fixed because the source code was withheld from users. Stallman also published the GNU Manifesto
GNU Manifesto
The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman and published in March 1985 in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools as an explanation and definition of the goals of the GNU Project, and to call for participation and support. It is held in high regard within the free software movement as a...
, in 1985, to outline the GNU project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
's purpose and explain the importance of free software. Another probable inspiration for the GNU project and its manifesto
GNU Manifesto
The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman and published in March 1985 in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools as an explanation and definition of the goals of the GNU Project, and to call for participation and support. It is held in high regard within the free software movement as a...
was a disagreement between Stallman and Symbolics, Inc.
Symbolics
Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was...
over MIT's access to updates Symbolics had made to its Lisp machine, which was based on MIT code.
Soon after the launch, he coined the term "free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
" and founded the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
to promote the concept and a free software definition
The Free Software Definition
The Free Software Definition, written by Richard Stallman and published by Free Software Foundation , defines free software, as a matter of liberty, not price. The term "free" is used in the sense of "free speech," not of "free beer." The earliest known publication of the definition was in the...
was published in February 1986.
In 1989, the first version of the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
was published. A slightly updated version 2 was published in 1991.
In 1989, some GNU developers formed the company Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software...
.
The GNU project's kernel, later called "GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd is a free software Unix-like replacement for the Unix kernel, released under the GNU General Public License. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation...
", was continually delayed, but most other components were completed by 1991. Some of these, especially the GNU Compiler Collection
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...
, had become market leaders in their own right. The GNU Debugger
GNU Debugger
The GNU Debugger, usually called just GDB and named gdb as an executable file, is the standard debugger for the GNU software system. It is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Java...
and GNU Emacs were also notable successes.
Linux (1991–)
The Linux kernelLinux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
, started by Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. The licence wasn't a free-software licence, but with version 0.12 in February 1992, Torvalds relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. Much like Unix, Torvalds' kernel attracted the attention of volunteer programmers.
Until this point, the GNU project's lack of a kernel meant that no complete free-software operating systems existed. The development of Torvalds' kernel closed that last gap. The combination of the almost-finished GNU operating system and the Linux kernel made the first complete free-software operating system.
Among Linux distributions, Debian GNU/Linux, begun by Ian Murdock
Ian Murdock
Ian Murdock is the founder of the Debian distribution and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company.- Life and career :Murdock was born in Konstanz, Germany....
in 1993, is noteworthy for being explicitly committed to the GNU and FSF principles of free software. The Debian developers' principles are expressed in the Debian Social Contract
Debian Social Contract
The Debian Social Contract is a document which frames the moral agenda of the Debian project. The values outlined in the Social Contract provide the basic principles for the rules set forth in the Debian Free Software Guidelines...
. Since its inception, the Debian project has been closely linked with the FSF, and in fact was sponsored by the FSF for a year in 1994–1995. In 1997, former Debian project leader Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens is a computer programmer and advocate in the open source community. He created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric S...
also helped found Software in the Public Interest
Software in the Public Interest
Software in the Public Interest, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed to help other organizations create and distribute free/open-source software and open-source hardware...
, a non-profit funding and support organization for various free-software projects.
GNU/Linux remains free software under the terms of the GNU GPL, and many businesses offer customized Linux-based products, or distributions, with commercial support. The naming remains controversial
GNU/Linux naming controversy
The GNU/Linux naming controversy is a dispute among members of the free and open source software community over how to refer to the computer operating system commonly called Linux....
. Referring to the complete system as simply "Linux" is common usage. However, the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
, and many others, advocate the use of the term "GNU/Linux", saying that it is a more accurate name for the whole operating system.
The free BSDs (1993–)
When the USL v. BSDiUSL v. BSDi
USL v. BSDi was a lawsuit brought in the United States in 1992 by Unix System Laboratories against Berkeley Software Design, Inc and the Regents of the University of California over intellectual property related to UNIX...
lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993, FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
and NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...
(both derived from 386BSD
386BSD
386BSD, sometimes called "Jolix", was a free Unix-like operating system based on BSD, first released in 1992. It ran on PC compatible computer systems based on the Intel 80386 microprocessor...
) were released as free software. OpenBSD
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
forked
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
from NetBSD in 1995. Other more recent forks also exist, including Apple's Darwin OS
Darwin (operating system)
Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects....
.
The dot-com years (late 1990s)
In the mid to late 90s, when many website-based companies were starting up, free software became a popular choice for web servers. Apache HTTP ServerApache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
became the most-used web-server software – a title that still holds as of 2010. Systems based on a common "stack" of software with the Linux kernel at the base, Apache providing web services, the MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
database engine for data storage, and the PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
programming language for providing dynamic pages, came to be known as LAMP
LAMP (software bundle)
LAMP is an acronym for a solution stack of free, open source software, referring to the first letters of Linux , Apache HTTP Server, MySQL and PHP , principal components to build a viable general purpose web server.The GNU project is advocating people to use the term "GLAMP" since what is known as...
systems.
The launch of Open Source
In 1997, Eric RaymondEric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond , often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond was for a number of years frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement...
published The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design...
, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and free-software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998 and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator
Netscape Communicator
Netscape Communicator was an Internet suite produced by Netscape Communications Corporation. Initially released in June 1997, Netscape Communicator 4.0 was the successor to Netscape Navigator 3.x and included more groupware features intended to appeal to enterprises.- Editions :Netscape...
Internet suite as free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
. This code is today the basis for Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
and Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser...
.
Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring free-software principles and benefits to the commercial-software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the free-software movement to emphasize the business potential of the sharing of source code.
The label “open source” was adopted by some people in the free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
movement at a strategy session held at Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
, in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
. The group of individuals at the session included Christine Peterson who suggested “open source”, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin
Larry Augustin
Larry Augustin is CEO of SugarCRM and is a former venture capitalist and the co-founder and former chairman of VA Software, now known as Geeknet. He founded VA Research, the predecessor to that company, in 1993 while a Ph.D...
, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat Inc, as well as President of the Open Source Initiative. He previously was the Chief Technical Officer of Red Hat...
and Eric S. Raymond
Eric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond , often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond was for a number of years frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement...
. Over the next week, Raymond and others worked on spreading the word. Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
gave an all-important sanction the following day. Phil Hughes offered a pulpit in Linux Journal
Linux Journal
Linux Journal is a monthly technology magazine published by Belltown Media, Inc. of Houston, Texas. The magazine focuses specifically on Linux, allowing the content to be a highly specialized source of information for open source enthusiasts.-History:...
. Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
, pioneer of the free software movement, flirted with adopting the term, but changed his mind. Those people who adopted the term used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to free themselves of the ideological and confrontational connotations of the term "free software". Netscape released its source code under the Netscape Public License
Netscape Public License
The Netscape Public License is a free software license, the license under which Netscape Communications Corporation originally released Mozilla....
and later under the Mozilla Public License
Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...
.
The term was given a big boost at an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly is the founder of O'Reilly Media and a supporter of the free software and open source movements.-Life and career:...
. Originally titled the “Freeware Summit” and later known as the “Open Source Summit”, The event brought together the leaders of many of the most important free and open-source projects, including Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall
Larry Wall
Larry Wall is a programmer and author, most widely known for his creation of the Perl programming language in 1987.-Education:Wall earned his bachelor's degree from Seattle Pacific University in 1976....
, Brian Behlendorf
Brian Behlendorf
Brian Behlendorf is a technologist, computer programmer, and an important figure in the open-source software movement. He was a primary developer of the Apache Web server, the most popular web server software on the Internet, and a founding member of the Apache Group, which later became the Apache...
, Eric Allman
Eric Allman
Eric Paul Allman is an American computer programmer who developed sendmail and its precursor delivermail in the late 1970s and early 1980s at UC Berkeley.-Education and training:...
, Guido van Rossum
Guido van Rossum
Guido van Rossum is a Dutch computer programmer who is best known as the author of the Python programming language. In the Python community, Van Rossum is known as a "Benevolent Dictator For Life" , meaning that he continues to oversee the Python development process, making decisions where necessary...
, Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat Inc, as well as President of the Open Source Initiative. He previously was the Chief Technical Officer of Red Hat...
, Paul Vixie
Paul Vixie
Paul Vixie is an American Internet pioneer, the author of several RFCs and well-known Unix software.Vixie attended George Washington High School in San Francisco, California. He received a Ph.D in computer science from Keio University in 2011....
, Jamie Zawinski
Jamie Zawinski
Jamie Zawinski , commonly known as jwz, is a former professional American computer programmer responsible for significant contributions to the free software projects Mozilla and XEmacs, and early versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser...
of Netscape, and Eric Raymond. At that meeting, the confusion caused by the name free software was brought up. Tiemann argued for “sourceware” as a new term, while Raymond argued for “open source.” The assembled developers took a vote, and the winner was announced at a press conference that evening. Five days later, Raymond made the first public call to the free software community to adopt the new term. The Open Source Initiative
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...
was formed shortly thereafter.
However, Richard Stallman and the FSF harshly objected to the new organization's approach. They felt that, with its narrow focus on source code, OSI was burying the philosophical and social values of free software and hiding the issue of computer users' freedom. Stallman still maintained, however, that users of each term were allies in the fight against proprietary software.
In August 1999, Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
released the StarOffice
StarOffice
StarOffice, known briefly as Oracle Open Office before its discontinuation in 2010, is a proprietary office suite. It was originally developed by StarDivision which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999...
office suite as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
. The free-software version was renamed OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
, and coexists with StarOffice.
Starting in the early 2000s, a number of companies began to publish a portion of their source code to claim they were open source, while keeping key parts closed. This led to the development of the now widely used terms free open-source software and commercial open-source software
Commercial Open Source Software
The phrase Commercial open source software is used as a euphemism for Proprietary Open Source Software that contains some elements of free and open source software in order to legitimately claim to be "open source", however sometimes also limits availability of some generally enhanced...
to distinguish between truly open and hybrid forms of open source.
Desktop
KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich
Matthias Ettrich
Matthias Ettrich is a German computer scientist known for his contributions to the KDE and LyX projects.- School :...
. At the time, he was troubled by the inconsistencies in UNIX applications
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
. He proposed a new desktop environment
Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...
. He also wanted to make this desktop easy to use. His initial Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
post spurred a lot of interest.
Ettrich chose to use the Qt toolkit
Qt (toolkit)
Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...
for the KDE project. At the time, Qt did not use a free-software licence. Members of the GNU project became concerned with the use of such a toolkit for building a free-software desktop environment. In August 1997, two projects were started in response to KDE: the Harmony toolkit
Harmony toolkit
The Harmony toolkit is a never-completed free software widget toolkit that aimed to be API compatible with the then non-GPL licensed Qt widget toolkit. The QPL license that Qt used was free only if the program was not sold for profit and if its source code was freely available...
(a free replacement for the Qt libraries) and GNOME (a different desktop without Qt and built entirely on top of free software). GTK+
GTK+
GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
was chosen as the base of GNOME in place of the Qt toolkit.
In November 1998, the Qt toolkit was licensed under the free/open-source Q Public License
Q Public License
The Q Public License is a non-copyleft license, created by Trolltech for its free edition of the Qt. It was used until Qt 3.0, as Trolltech toolkit version 4.0 was released under GPL version 2...
(QPL) but debate continued about compatibility with the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(GPL). In September 2000, Trolltech
Trolltech
Qt Development Frameworks is an Oslo, Norway-based software company best known for its Qt toolkit and application framework. Qt Development Frameworks is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nokia Corporation...
made the Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
version of the Qt libraries available under the GPL, in addition to the QPL, which has eliminated the concerns of the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
.
Both KDE and GNOME now participate in freedesktop.org
Freedesktop.org
freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000.The organisation focuses on the user....
, an effort to standardize Unix desktop interoperability, although there is still some competition between them.
Recent developments
On May 8, 2007, Sun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
released the Java Development Kit as OpenJDK
OpenJDK
OpenJDK is a free and open source implementation of the Java programming language. It is the result of an effort Sun Microsystems began in 2006...
under the GNU General Public License. Part of the class library (4% of it) could not be released as open source due to them being licensed from other parties and were included as binary plugs. Because of this, in June 2007, Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....
launched IcedTea
IcedTea
IcedTea is a build and integration project for OpenJDK launched by Red Hat in June 2007. The initial goal was to make the Java OpenJDK software which Sun Microsystems released as free software in 2007 usable without requiring any other software that is not free software and hence make it possible...
to resolve the encumbered components with the equivalents from GNU Classpath
GNU Classpath
GNU Classpath is a project aiming to create a free software implementation of the standard class library for the Java programming language. Despite the massive size of the library to be created, the majority of the task is already done, including Swing, CORBA, and other major parts. The Classpath...
implementation. Since the release, most of the encumbrances have been solved, leaving only the audio engine code and colour management system (the latter is to be resolved using LittleCMS
LittleCMS
LittleCMS or LCMS is an open source color management system, released as a software library for use in other programs which will allow the use of International Color Consortium profiles. It is licenced under the MIT License Agreement....
).
See also
- History of the Linux kernel
- History of Mozilla Application SuiteHistory of Mozilla Application SuiteThe history of the Mozilla Application Suite began with the release of the source code of the Netscape suite as an open source project. Going through years of hard working , Mozilla 1.0 was eventually released on June 5, 2002...
- History of software engineeringHistory of software engineeringFrom its beginnings in the 1940s, writing software has evolved into a profession concerned with how best to maximize the quality of software and of how to create it...
- List of formerly proprietary software
- OpenBSD timelineOpenBSD timelineThe following is a summary of the release history of the OpenBSD operating system.*1.1: October 18, 1995 –* OpenBSD CVS repository created by Theo de Raadt. * While the version number used at this stage was 1.1 The following is a summary of the release history of the OpenBSD operating system.*1.1:...
External links
- Software Is for Sharing, Time Magazine, By Philip Elmer-Dewitt, Jul 30, 1984
- Richard Stallman speaking about free software and the GNU project in 1986, Sweden
- David A. Wheeler on the history of free software, from his "Look at the numbers!" paper
- The Daemon, the GNU, and the Penguin, by Peter Salus
- Documents about the BSD lawsuit that lead to 386BSD and then FreeBSD
- Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (January 1999)
- The history of Cygnus solutions, the largest free-software company of the early 90s
- LWN.net's 1998–2008 timeline part 1 (part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
- Open Source Software, a paper by Oliver Mezquita Prieto
- Google timelines: Free software, GNU,BSD, Linux, Open source
- A Brief History of FreeBSD, by Jordan Hubbard
- UNESCO Free Software Portal
- Infinite Hands, a free licensed folk song about the history of free software.