Open Source History: What We've Learned So Far
The history of open source is long and storied, and fascinating enough to be a book. Which is what The VAR Guy contributing editor Christopher Tozzi is doing. And while he's been plugging away at his trusty Smith-Corona (not really—he's definitely an open source stalwart), The VAR Guy has been lucky enough to be the recipient of the byproducts of his research.
July 1, 2015
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The history of open source is long and storied, and fascinating enough to be a book. Which is what The VAR Guy contributing editor Christopher Tozzi is doing. And while he's been plugging away at his trusty Smith-Corona (not really—he's definitely an open source stalwart), The VAR Guy has been lucky enough to be the recipient of the byproducts of his research.
And so, without further ado, here's a collection of the Open Source History lessons we've learned thus far.
Open source is all about sharing, keeping code open and providing universal access. That, at least, is the received wisdom that has helped guide open source programmers and companies for the last two decades. But a look at the history of open source projects such as Linux suggests that sharing and openness were not actually the primary motives of their founders. Here's why.
Read the story here.
Early Linux hackers were motivated by a desire to build a Unix-like operating system that would run on personal computers and not cost money. They were not worried about the sharing principles of open source programming.
Read the story here.
It is difficult to associate open source programmers and companies with what some writers have called "hacker culture" or "the hacker ethic." Instead, open source values, and projects such as Linux, can be traced to academia.
Read the story here.
Why did Linux, the Unix-like operating system kernel started by Linus Torvalds in 1991 that became central to the open source world, succeed where so many similar projects, including GNU HURD and the BSDs, fail?
Read the story here.
What is the relationship between free and open source software on the one hand, and "free culture," "open source culture" or "open society" on the other?
Read the story here.
Tensions between the free software/open source community and Apple date back to the 1980s, Linux's founder called the core of Mac OS X "a piece of crap" and other anecdotes from software history.
Read the story here.
A consideration of how differently the consumer PC software market may have turned out if GNU and the Free Software Foundation had built free/"open source" software to replace MS-DOS and Windows, rather than Unix.
Read the story here.
Richard Stallman, GNU and the Free Software Foundation have not always been as radical and averse to compromise as some supporters of open source software and the Linux kernel have contended.
Read the story here.
BSD was the first "open source" Unix-like operating system, but it never became nearly as popular as ones based on GNU and the Linux kernel.
Read the story here.
BSD was the first "open source" Unix-like operating system, but it never became nearly as popular as ones based on GNU and the Linux kernel.
Read the story here.
The history of open source is long and storied, and fascinating enough to be a book. Which is what The VAR Guy contributing editor Christopher Tozzi is doing. And while he's been plugging away at his trusty Smith-Corona (not really—he's definitely an open source stalwart), The VAR Guy has been lucky enough to be the recipient of the byproducts of his research.
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