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ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the before-there-was-github dept.

Esther Schindler writes "The Airline Control Program (ACP), introduced by IBM around 1967, predated the term 'open source' by decades. But you may be surprised by how much of its development resembles the FOSS movement today. The ITWorld.com article An Abbreviated History of ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Applications describes what made it special."

2 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. It's not open source. by loufoque · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It's not because the code was available and IBM agreed to include the fixes people made that is is open source.
    To be open source, people should have been allowed to distribute their own modified version and sell it, for example, which wasn't the case.

    Also, open source is unrelated to the development model, it's only about what licenses for the consumers allow.

    1. Re:It's not open source. by loufoque · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Open source means the code is available. Nothing else.

      Unfortunately, that is a very common misconception.

      In practice, open-source and free software are interchangeable terms, since albeit their definition is slightly different, there is no software license that fulfills one but not the other.

      Strictly speaking, however, and again contrary to popular belief, free software is *less* restrictive than open source. For example, see points 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 of the open source definition which are restrictions not made by the free software one.

      The real confusion people make is associating free software with copyleft due to the GNU GPL (which is a copyleft license) being the most popular license from the free software foundation.