The last quartile of the 20th century was marked by a rise in software development by companies, individuals and hobbyist groups. Key among software development methodologies was a controversial yet innovative idea about giving away your software code for others to use and improve upon it.
Those new to the free and open source community may not appreciate how radical and dangerous the idea of giving away your source code for free was for people. Those that did subscribe to the ideology sacrificed tremendous profits and fame yet helped create what we now call FOSS today.
A business model that has helped lower the cost of ownership of software and has given us the ability to inexpensively deploy cloud solutions today (via an open source stack).
So what were the origins of FOSS? How did the revolution begin?
Let’s take a look:
The FOSS Revolution
On our Research and FOSS History
We noticed how often early FOSS pioneers used revolutionary themes and language to describe the battle with proprietary software vendors and IT departments. Therefore we thought the revolutionary theme appropriate.
We know and understand that there are huge bodies of FOSS history that we have missed. But we tried to cover the primary highlights and educate our readers at the same time. It’s a great story and one we enjoyed putting together.
P.S. Who do you believe is the Benedict Arnold of Free and Open Source? Please give us your comments below.
Your use of antique paper and pictures from the 18th and 19th century are appropriate for the FOSS revolution which is rooted in antiquity, quaint and irrelevant.
I’d have to disagree. From what I’m seeing, Closed source software appears to be an artifact of the past, while open source has made great strides.