FREE SOFTWARE - OPEN SOFTWARE - Short History and Structure

AUTHOR: Gerd Döben-Henisch
DATE OF FIRST GENERATION: Oct-9, 2001
DATE OF LAST CHANGE: Sept-10, 2002
EMAIL: Gerd Döben-Henisch

 The following facts are mostly extracted from the wonderful paper of Richard Stallmann

The following informal view is still incomplete; by the time I will try to enhance it. The pace of the growing numbers of started free software projects has been accelerated since about 1997 in a way which makes it more and more impossible to keep up!!!

TIME	ACTION	WHO	SW	COMMENT
1971	R.Stalmann at MIT AI Lab	Richard Stalmann	ICS := Incompatible Timesharing System	The basic experience ... hacker := someone who loves to program and enjoys being clever about it
Early 1980s	New Hardware making Software obsolet; nondisclosure agreements is stopping freedom of Software	Symbolics, DEC	Proprietary Operating Systems (VMS, UNIX)	Not allowed to help your neighbour => antisocial, unethical
1984	Richard Stalmann is quitting his job at MIT and is starting the GNU-Project ; Prof. Winston allowed to use the facility of the MIT AI-lab for the idas of the GNU-project	Richard Stalmann	The idea is to have 'free software': fredom to run, to modify, of having access to the source code, to redistribute (gratis or for a fee), to distribute with modifications. The basis of free software should be a free operating system called GNU (:= 'GNU is not Unix')	Used TeX as principal Textformatter Later included the X-Window System . These software was not GNU-Software, but was free and therefore could be used in the GNU-project
Sept 1984	Richard Stalmann start working on emacs	Richard Stalmann	emacs, the GNU editor	Basis for the other work
Early 1985	emacs can be used	Richard Stalmann	emacs, the GNU editor	Starting free distributions by an anonymous ftp-server
1985	Foundation of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) , a tax-free charity for free software development.	Richard Stalmann and others	Distributing emacs	Introduction of the GNU General Public License (GPL); the idea of 'copyleft', thus enabling real freedom in the usage of software, not only 'becoming popular' by great numbers of users.
Since 1985	Funding the development of the GNU C library and the BASH-Shell ('Bourne-again-Shell'); GNU C-compiler (GCC), GNU tar, GNU make	Roland McGrath - C Library, Brian Fox - BASH	C Library, Bash, GNU C-compiler (GCC), GNU tar, GNU make	Free Software support is e.g. compatible with selling copies (which as such are 'free'!), selling services, teaching, port software on platforms GNU did not accept the technical limits of the UNIX-Industry at that time In the beginning one was using donate Computers with UNIX only as long as there was no compatible piece of free software available There was a task list of missing software including besides system software also applications and even games For GNU Libraries the GPL was modified as LGPL which allows the linkage of GNU Libraries with proprietary software
1990	GNU system almost complete, missing only a free kernel. But the MACH kernel was not yet released as free software	Carnegie Mellon University, University of Utah	No Kernel for GNU System at that time ...	The idea was to have GNU HURD (:= a 'herd of servers') as a bundle of GNU servers running on top of a MACH-kernel.
1991	Linus Torvalds is developing a new free kernel called Linux	Linus Torvalds	Linux is becoming into live ...	The combination of LINUX as a new free kernel with all the other GNU tools could result in the intended GNU operating system.
1992	Combining the Linux kernel with the GNU system	Linus Torvalds and others	The GNU/Linux operating system is borne	Principially one could replace the Linux kernel by other kernels, but .....
After 1997	Many new projects ...	Many ...	GNOME, harmony, xfree86, X toolkit widgets, LessTif, Qt ... More and more new GNU/Linux distributions Red Hat, Debian, SuSe ...	Main problem ist still a good documentation. The success of free software induces more companies to use free software and bubdle it in a way, which tends to diminish the freedom of software (:= Open Software...) The 'Linux'-magazins are mostly not clear with regard to the philosophy of 'free software'...
After 2000	Linux is entering all levels of operating systems, from smallest ones until cluster computing with 500 and more nodes	Many...; the big companies are including Linux in their strategy; big customers are replacing their proprietary software with GNU/Linux operating system and GNU software...	More than 46.000 free software projects registered in September 2002 ...	The free software philosophy is for most users 'hidden' behind the big commercial success of the growing number of companies

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