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History of free software This is a timeline-style look at how free software has evolved and existed from its inception.

Before 1983 Some of the core principles of free software grew from the philosophies of openness and co-operation, long established in the fields of academia and scientific research (in this case, computer science).

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 largely by academics and corporate researchers working in collaboration and was not itself seen as a commodity. Operating systems were widely distributed and maintained by the community of users. Source code, the human-readable version of software, was distributed with software because users frequently modified the software themselves to fix bugs or add new functionality. 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 software was developed by the user community. By the late 1960s change was coming: as operating systems and programming language compilers evolved, manufacturer's software costs were dramatically increasing. A nascent, albeit growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's 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 State 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.

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 copyrights, trademarks, 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.

The advent of Usenet 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.

What remains Some free software which was developed in the 70s and early 80s which continues to be used includes SPICE,[8], 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.

GNU and FSF's early years Main article: GNU project In 1983, Richard Stallman 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 them. 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.

Linux (1991-) The Linux kernel, started by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. The licence wasn't exactly a free software licence, but with version 0.12 in February 1992, he 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 GNU/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 1994-5. 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, but many businesses offer customized Linux-based products, or distributions, with commercial support. The naming remains controversial inside the free software community, with groups arguing for either "Linux" or "GNU/Linux" for the whole operating system.

See also: GNU/Linux naming controversy

The free BSDs (1993-) When the USL v. BSDi 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.

The GNU+Linux distributions From 1993 onwards, operating systems based on GNU, Linux, and other software began to appear. Peter MacDonald 's Softlanding Linux System was the first organised distribution, and Debian GNU/Linux was probably the first popular distribution.

In 1997, the Debian project published their Debian Free Software Guidelines.

The DotCom 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 Server became the most used web server software - a title that still holds as of 2008. 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 binding it all together, came to be known as LAMP systems.

The launch of "Open Source" In 1997, Eric Raymond 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 better known as 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 new name they chose was "open source," and quickly Bruce Perens, publisher Tim O'Reilly, Linus Torvalds, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage use of the new term and evangelize open source principles.

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.

See also: Alternative terms for free software

 Desktop early XX 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.

See also: X Window System, KDE, and GNOME

 Recent developments This section requires expansion.

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.

In May 8, 2007, Sun Microsystems 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.[citation needed] Because of this, in June 2007, RedHat 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).

Community: The principle behind the hype Many programmers help create open source software but are never paid for their work. Some people are puzzled by a community of talented individuals donating their hard work. Their improvements can even be used in proprietary software, in which "the hood is welded shut."

Talent is rewarded with celebrity.Open source succeeds on the principle of community. In place of money, programmers expect appreciation and recognition. Talent is rewarded with celebrity. The Internet's hyper-connected subcultures gives master programmers maximum celebrity in their particular fields. This is a feedback loop. For example, Richard Stallman is famous for his GNU C Compiler, and his fame attracted volunteers to later GNU projects.

Educators describe this community as a "culture of giving" (much like Raymond's bazaar). They rely on the community for technical assistance one day and help other people the next day. Grateful community members can give back indirectly by donating time or money to others. Some formal mechanisms even exist to "pay it forward" (e.g. http://ww.affero.com).

"Raise the level of the ocean and all ships rise together." - Jeremy Hogan, Red HatThis atmosphere of "share and share alike" is sometimes misunderstood as unrealistically egalitarian or dangerously chaotic. Open source doesn't mean communism or anarchy. Most successful open source projects aren't as democratic as they may sound. Successful projects usually have a strong leader (or leadership team). Many projects fail to attract enough volunteers or fall apart in conflict. However, the open process means everyone has the right to fork: to advance the code in a different direction. It may be more desirable for 100 programmers to create one word processor, but if four groups of 25 programmers want to create four different word processors, they can.

Open source software companies have to navigate this "cooperative competition." Vendors package and distribute unique brands with "value added" modifications. Some proponents admit that profit margins may be smaller than in the past. But since the process and formats are open, it's difficult for any company to achieve a monopoly through customer lock in.

Linux itself is an example of cooperative-competition, in that our engineers work for Red Hat, and Conectiva for Conectiva, but at the upstream kernel level, at the community level, they all work together. For example we coordinate security releases with other vendors, rather than release and accuse others of being unsecure, if we right a nice bit of code, the other vendors get it. - Jeremy Hogan, Red Hat (personal communication, December 13, 2002) Even some proprietary software eventually becomes open source. For example, a computer game has a limited shelf life because a better game will eventually seize the market. So some game companies give away their old source code a few years after the game is released. This pleases their customer base and enriches the gaming community.

Educators can probably relate to a culture of giving better than many people. The open source community is especially welcoming and helpful to educators, because teaching is a virtuous profession and schools have limited resources. For advice on dealing with the community, see: "Join the open source community"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Open_Source

The Open Source Definition Fri, 2006-07-07 15:49 — Ken Coar Introduction

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. 2. Source Code

The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. 3. Derived Works

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code

The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. 7. Distribution of License

The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product

The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution. 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software

The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. 10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd http://ph.search.yahoo.com/search?p=definition+of+open+source+software&fcss=on&fr=yfp-t-101-s&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8&fr2=fpsg&sado=1