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Open Source After 12 Years

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the seems-like-only-yesterday dept.

GMGruman writes "12 years ago, seven people in a room coined the term "open source" and launched what initially seemed like a quixotic exercise. Today, open source is mainstream, with original believers such as Red Hat worth billions and superpowers such as Oracle buying in. But open source has changed along the way, says InfoWorld's Peter Wayner, and may change more in coming years."

7 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Re:12 years? by Oriumpor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Halloween was 1994 wasn't it? I mean, even if you only take into account attempts to monetize Linux the OSS movement started to become popularized at least 16 years ago. RMS wrote the Gnu manifesto 25 years ago, one could argue it all started then....

  2. Allow me... by TheCarp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    12 years ago, seven people in a room coined the term "open source", in an attempt to rebrand the much older "Free Software" movement, and launched what initially seemed like a quixotic exercise, to convince corporate drones who can't look past the CYA service contract, without having to admit that good work can be done by people without a profit incentive, and the whole world is not beholden to their stock market god.

    --
    "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
  3. Yeah, 12 years since the hucksters came by spun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what the hell was I using in 1996? Before Bruce and Eric started "promoting" themse... I mean, open source, other people like Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds were actually writing it.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    1. Re:Yeah, 12 years since the hucksters came by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 5, Insightful

      First paragraph of TFA:

      It is now just over 12 years since seven people sat down in a conference room in Silicon Valley to fix what they saw as the marketing problem with the words "free software." Most people thought that the word "free" meant only that no one had to pay. It seemed they didn't have an attention span long enough to try to grok what Richard Stallman was saying when he kept repeating, "'free,' as in speech."

      So basically, this story is more about a revolution in branding than a revolution in software.

  4. So. Very. Wrong. Must look to gcc. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Stallman started gcc 20+ years ago. Witout that and his GPL, this "movement" wouldn't exist.

  5. Oracle is not a superpower by aeoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Today, open source is mainstream, with original believers such as Red Hat worth billions and superpowers such as Oracle buying in.

    Can we please chill with the rhetoric? Oracle is not a superpower, for fuck's sake. Secondly, Oracle's relationship with open source is not entirely clear. Oracle currently seems to be at odds with at least some open source initiatives. So I wouldn't be saying that Oracle is "buying in" if I were in your place.

  6. You're kidding by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Free Software licenses and Open Source licenses are the same licenses to this day. RMS has always accepted BSD as a free software license. There are some licenses that are not GPL-compatible but still considered to be Free.

    --
    Bruce Perens.