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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] 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 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 [opensource.org] Eds: there are many related links around the net, should they be thrown in? e.g. https://perens.com/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-open-source/ [perens.com]

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