Open Source: History

The concept of open source was not new or latest. It was there since the beginning of human culture. For example, cooking recipes and farming tips are shared since the existence of human. They used different terms to share and re share them. Increased interest in software that is freely shared has made it increasingly necessity to define a term for sharing. In early term “free software” was used and later term “open source” was adopted (Open Source, Wikipedia). “Early instances of open source and free software include IBM’s source release of its operating system and other programs in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and the SHARE user group that formed to facilitate the exchange of software”(Fish Frankin M, Jams W. Mckie, Richard B. Mancke 1983).

Netscape has announced to release it source code of Navigator, which was proprietary web browser that was popular in 1990’s; lead some group of individuals in free software movement to held a conference at Pala Alto, California for discussion on how to use the free source code. Among them Christine Peterson suggested open source instead of free software, Tiemann suggested ‘sourceware’ a new term. The assembled developers took a vote, and the winner “open source” was announced at press conference. Eric S. Raymond made the first public call to free software community to adopt the new term “open source” (Eric S. Raymond, 1988). Later the Open Source Initiative was formed shortly.