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The Next 20 Years of Open Source Software Begins Today

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the progress++ dept.

canopic jug writes:

Over at the Open Source Initiative, Simon Phipps writes about the past, present, and future of Open Source Software as it turns 20 this year. Thought of in a strategy session on how to make Free Software more palatable to certain business interests, the orignal idea was for it to be a stepping stone from proprietary to Free Software by focusing first on the advantages of the developmental model.

Thirty-five years ago when Richard Stallman decided that he could no longer tolerate proprietary software, and started the free software movement, software freedom was misunderstood and dismissed. Twenty years ago a group of free software advocates gathered in California and decided that software freedom needed to be brought to the business world. The result was a marketing program called "open source". That same month, February 1998, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded as a general educational and advocacy organization to raise awareness and adoption for the superiority of an open development process.

Of course, old-timers will remind us that originally software was source and binaries did not count. Up until the late 1970s or early 1980s, when you bought software, it was source.

Source : Happy Anniversary—The Next 20 Years of Open Source Begins Today

Related:
https://perens.com/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-open-source/

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:23AM (2 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:23AM (#632860) Journal

    Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software

    From TFA:

    In the third decade of open source, we will rediscover software freedom.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:40AM (1 child)

    by Arik (4543) on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:40AM (#632879) Journal
    "In the third decade of open source, we will rediscover software freedom."

    So they're going to seek to find relevance by... becoming what they rebelled against?
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @12:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @12:42PM (#632898)

      Not so much a rebellion but a (poorly thought) marketing exercise.