In the 1950's and 1960's software was almost always distributed with its source with little restrictions.
In the 1970's companies started to close their source and treat code as "industrial secret"
The Unix system is a multi-user, multi tasking operating system which means that it allows a single or multiprocessor computer to simultaneously execute several programs by one or several users. It has one or several command interpreters (shell) as well as a great number of commands and many utilities (assembler, compilers for many languages, text processing, email, etc.). Furthermore, it is highly portable, which means that it is possible to implement a Unix system on almost all hardware platforms.
(later PostrgreSQL) INGRES (Interactive Graphics and Retrieval System) is a relational data base and graphics system which is being implemented on a PDP-11/40 based hardware configuration at Berkeley. INGRES runs as a normal user job on top of the UNIX operating system developed at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. The only significant modification to UNIX that INGRES requires is a substantial increase in the maximum file size allowed. This change was implemented by the UNIX designers. The implementation of INGRES is primarily programmed in "C", a high level language in which UNIX itself is written. Parsing is done with the assistance of YACC, a compiler-compiler available on UNIX.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become the norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software can be regarded as a consequence triggered by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as stated by Stallman's MIT fellow Brewster Kahle.
Another contribution, which has totally changed the whole way that mathematics is printed and communicated is Knuth's invention of TeX, a language for typesetting mathematical and scientific articles. Starting in 1976 Knuth took ten years off his other projects to work on the development of TeX and METAFONT, a computer software system for alphabet design. TeX has changed the technology of mathematics and science publishing since it enables mathematicians and scientists to produce the highest quality of printing of mathematical articles yet this can be achieved simply using a home computer.
Richard Stallman, MIT AI Lab, observes a shift from a free UNIX culture to a proprietary software culture in his working environment.
Stallman leaves MIT and creates the GNU Project. Started by Richard Stallman in 1983, the GNU Project is a mass collaboration project for open and free software that has flourished even to this day. Stallman followed up the GNU Project with the creation of the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to further support the free software community. The GNU Project has resulted in a huge amount of open source software over time and gave birth to the GNU General Public License (GPL), arguably the most popular open source license model out there. And when the Linux kernel arrived, GNU software made it into a complete OS.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a movement which promotes the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software,[2] with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("share alike") terms,[3] such as with its own GNU General Public License.[4] The FSF is incorporated in Massachusetts, USA
Enter story info here
The GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition[6] and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved whenever the work is distributed, even when the work is changed or added to. The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derived works can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses are the standard examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use.
The decision by Linus Torvalds to develop his own version of the Minix kernel resulted in the now world-famous Linux. (An interesting side note is that he initially wanted to call it “Freax”.) The Linux kernel became the last piece of the puzzle for the GNU operating system project, providing an entirely free and open source operating system.
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) 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.[5] Red Hat has become associated to a large extent with its enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux and with the acquisition of open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss. Red Hat provides operating-system platforms along with middleware, applications, and management products, as well as support, training, and consulting services. Red Hat creates, maintains, and contributes to many free software projects and has also acquired several proprietary software packages and released their source code. As of February 2009, Red Hat was the largest corporate contributor to the Linux kernel.[
Michael Widenius and David Axmark started developing MySQL in 1994 (in Sweden, something we feel compelled to point out since we’re Swedes too here at Pingdom ;) ) and released the first version in 1995. Over the years, MySQL has become the open source database solution of choice and is used by a huge number of companies and websites like Facebook and Wikipeda. As of 2009, there were more than 11 million MySQL installations. MySQL has also, just like Red Hat did, shown how open source can be big business. In 2008, Sun paid one billion dollars for the company.
The Apache HTTP server showed how an open source product can come to almost completely dominate a market. Based on the NSCA HTTPd, one of the very first web servers, Apache has consistently been the most widely used web server software on the Internet since 1996, and it doesn’t look like this will change anytime soon.
In its increasingly desperate war with Microsoft and Internet Explorer, Netscape finally decided to open source its web browser early in 1998 and started the open source community Mozilla to hold the reigns. Although Netscape eventually faded into obscurity and folded, without this historic move there would have been no Mozilla, and without Mozilla there would have been no Firefox, and we all know how influential that web browser has become. After three months of anticipation, Netscape Communications (NSCP) today finally released the source code for its Communicator suite. Netscape this morning unveiled the much-anticipated release with a teleconference featuring breathy executive statements touting the significance of the move. The company actually posted the approximately 8 megabytes of compressed Communicator 5.0 code at 10 a.m. PT to Mozilla.org, the site Netscape has set up to be the central clearinghouse for source code-related information.
Development based on the sharing and collaborative improvement of software source code has a history essentially as long as software development itself. In the late 1990s, interest and participation in this phenomenon increased markedly with mainstream recognition of Linux in publications like Forbes and the release of the Netscape browser’s source code. OSI was formed in 1998 as an educational, advocacy, and stewardship organization at this important moment in the history of collaborative development.
In December 2002, Creative Commons released its first set of copyright licenses for free to the public. Creative Commons developed its licenses — inspired in part by the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) — alongside a Web application platform to help you license your works freely for certain uses, on certain conditions; or dedicate your works to the public domain.
When South African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth’s company, Canonical, released the Debian-based Ubuntu in 2004, few could have expected what a massive success it would become. Ubuntu quickly became the most widely used Linux distribution by far, especially on the desktop, and has brought Linux to the masses like no other distributionUbuntu is composed of many software packages, the majority of which are distributed under a free software license. The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. On the other hand, there is also proprietary software available that can run on Ubuntu.
The FLOSSCC network is a world-wide initiative promoted by FLOSS enthusiasts from Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and USA. The objective of each Competence Centre is to act locally in its geographical region, working as a meeting point and knowledge repository in the field of FLOSS and of its own specialties. Competence Centres also collaborate in a worldwide community exchanging experiences, methods, and solutions to expand and spread knowledge on FLOSS. These Centres work as catalysts, fostering trust and reliability of FLOSS, both in the software industry and in society. All Competence Centres share a common ethics and culture of collaboration that is expressed in the Manifesto for FLOSS Competence Centres.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close