In the 1950s and 1960s, computer operating software and compilers were delivered as a part of hardware purchases without separate fees. At the time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was … See more

In the 1950s and into the 1960s almost all software was produced by academics and corporate researchers working in collaboration, often shared as public-domain software. As such, it was generally distributed under the principles of openness and cooperation See more

The X Window System was created in 1984, and became the de facto standard window system in desktop free software operating systems by the mid-1990s. X runs as a server, … See more

The vast majority of programming languages in use today have a free software implementation available.
Since the 1990s, the release of major new programming … See more

The concept of free sharing of technological information existed long before computers. For example, in the early years of automobile development, one enterprise owned the rights to a 2-cycle gasoline engine patent originally filed by See more

Informal software sharing continues
However, there were still those who wished to share their source code with other programmers and/or with users on a free basis, then called "hobbyists" and "hackers". Before the introduction and widespread public … See more

As free software became more popular, industry incumbents such as Microsoft started to see it as a serious threat. This was shown in a leaked 1998 document, confirmed by … See more