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As the world's first home computers appeared in 1975, Bill Gates -- then 20 years old -- screamed that "Most of you steal your software..." (Gates had coded the operating system for Altair's first home computer with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff -- only to see it pirated by Steve Wozniak's friends at the Homebrew Computing Club.) Expecting royalties, a none-too-happy Gates issued his letter in the club's newsletter (as well as Altair's own publication), complaining "I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up."
Freedom-loving coders had other ideas. When Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs released their Apple 1 home computer that summer, they stressed that "our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost..." And the earliest open-source hackers began writing their own free Tiny Basic interpreters to create a free alternative to the Gates/Micro-Soft code. (This led to the first occurrence of the phrase "Copyleft" in October of 1976.)
Open Source definition author Bruce Perens shares his thoughts today. "When I left Pixar in 2000, I stopped in Steve Job's office — which for some reason was right across the hall from mine... " Perens remembered. "I asked Steve: 'You still don't believe in this Linux stuff, do you...?'" And Perens remembers how 30 years later, that movement finally won over Steve Jobs.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04, @11:01PM
On the contrary, copyright is center of the "copy left". Also, software like GPL started for 1 purpose -- stop re-inventing the wheel. You are paid to alter software and everyone benefits, instead of reinventing and rewriting same software over and over again as was very common in the past. Today, many software companies that sell certifications and support contracts benefit hugely from this too. We are talking many tens of billions if not hundreds of billions are spend every year on "copy left" or otherwise freedom software support contracts. Heck, the company I work for makes almost 10 digits in sales alone. And we sell no hardware or SaaS or whatever and no lock-in ecosystem either. Just pure certification and support play.