History of free software
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a timeline-style look at how free software has evolved and existed from its inception.
Contents |
[edit] 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 its term "free software".[1] According to Richard Stallman, the software sharing community at MIT existed for "many years" before he got involved in 1971.[2]
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 inevitable: manufacturer's software costs were dramatically increasing, a growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products (bundled products were free in that their cost 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 "free" software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive[3]. While some software might always be free, there would be 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, companies began routinely imposing restrictions on software, now seen as assets, through copyright. 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 licenses when the company decided it might profit by selling the Unix system.[4]
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.[5]
[edit] What remains
Some free software which was developed in the 70s and early 80s which continues to be used includes SPICE,[6], 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.
[edit] GNU and FSF's early years
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 a printer wouldn't work and its users couldn't fix the problem because the source code was withheld from them[7]. The final impetus,[citation needed] however, 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.[8] 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.[9] A slightly updated version 2 was published in 1991.
In 1989, some GNU developers formed the company Cygnus Solutions.[10]
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.
[edit] 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.[11] 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.[12]
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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 and 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 chosen 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.[13]
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.[14]
[edit] Desktop
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.[15]
Matthias 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).[16] 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.[17]
[edit] Recent developments
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Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (December 2008) |
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).
[edit] See also
- History of the Linux kernel
- History of Mozilla Application Suite
- History of software engineering
- List of liberated software
- OpenBSD timeline
[edit] 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 History, 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.
[edit] References
- ^ Steven Levy. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. ISBN 0-385-19195-2.
- ^ "The GNU Project (essay)". http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html. Retrieved on 2007-06-19. "in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years"
- ^ Fisher, Franklin M.; McKie, James W.; Mancke, Richard B. (1983). IBM and the U.S. Data Processing Industry: An Economic History. Praeger. ISBN 0-03-063059-2.
- ^ Weber, Steven (2004). The Success of Open Source. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. pp. 38-44. ISBN 0-674-01858-3. http://www.polisci.berkeley.edu/Faculty/bio/permanent/Weber,S/.
- ^ De Bona, C., et al. Open Sources 2.0. O'Reilly, ISBN 0596008023.
- ^ "A brief history of spice". http://www.ecircuitcenter.com/SpiceTopics/History.htm.
- ^ "Talk transcript where Stallman tells the printer story". http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt.
- ^ "Transcript of Richard Stallman's Speech, 28 Oct 2002, at the International Lisp Conference)". GNU Project. 2002-10-28. http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-21.
- ^ "GNU General Public License v1.0". http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.txt.
- ^ Michael Tiemann. "Future of Cygnus Solutions, An Entrepreneur's Account". http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/tiemans.html.
- ^ "Release notes for Linux kernel 0.12". http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.12.
- ^ "A Brief History of Debian". http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-detailed.en.html.
- ^ "History of the OSI". http://opensource.org/history.
- ^ Richard Stallman. "Why Open Source Misses the Point". http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.
- ^ (14 October 1996). "New Project: Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)". de.comp.os.linux.misc. (Web link). Retrieved on 2006-12-29.
- ^ Richard Stallman (2000-09-05). "Stallman on Qt, the GPL, KDE, and GNOME". http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-09-05-001-21-OP-LF-KE. Retrieved on 2005-09-09.
- ^ A tale of two desktops
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