Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: A History of "Open Source", Part II

Author:Ken MacLeod
Posted:8/20/2000; 3:53:50 PM
Topic:A History of "Open Source"
Msg #:19856 (In response to 19851)
Prev/Next:19855 / 19857

I don't know how this would be included, but these histories don't account for the huge body of software that wasn't part of any following or "brand". Software that was posted to Usenet source newsgroups, available via ftp, email archives, gopher, etc. long before and long aside "Free Software" and "Open Source". A lot of current projects still would not desire to claim any "affiliation" except to say "here's our stuff, we did this because we wanted to or it's useful to us, and we're making it available because there's no reason not to."

The biggest reason early on for publishing source in Unix, UseNet, and Internet land is because that is the easiest way to distribute portable software. People often contributed their software simply because they saw others doing so.

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