Libre software History
Course: Introduction to libre software
Israel Herraiz
<herraiz@gsyc.es>
A Coruña, October 20th 2007
Master on Free Software

In the beginning...
● Software was born free
● Companies competed on the hardware
market
● Software was included as a “gift” with
hardware
● Software was distributed as source code
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“ We did not call our software “free software”, because that term did not
yet exist; but that is what it was.
Whenever people from another university or a company wanted to port
and use a program, we gladly let them.
If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting program, you
could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it,
change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program”
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1960
● In spite of this
– There were no a hardware platform which
were the standard
– There was no Internet
● This technical reasons made sharing quite
restricted
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Beginning of proprietary
software
● Only a few hardware platforms survived
● Higher level languages (C)
● Appearance of legal restrictions
● 1970: IBM begins to sell its software apart
from hardware
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Summarizing
● Software was born free....
● ....but sharing was quite restricted
because of technical reasons
● However, those technical restrictions
were being overcome...
● ...then legal restrictions appeared to keep
sharing being difficult
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The GNU movement
● Richard Stallman
● Artificial Intelligence Lab, MIT, 1970-80
● Problems with a network printer
● Hackers from AI lab were hired by
startups
● NDA
● Those hackers worked on the same
topics, but now the topics were kept
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Unix Evolution
● First develop on 1969 at Bell Labs
● Source code was available
● That source code was studied in
universities
● 1980: AT&T restricts the access to the
source code of Unix
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Unix Evolution
● University of California at Berkeley
● Computer Science Research Group
● BSD
● CSRG own Unix version
● Sued by AT&T on 1991
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In the meanwhile
● 1984: rms drops his position at MIT
● Born of the GNU project
● GNU was very advanced by 1990
● However there was the lack of a kernel
● Emacs
● GCC
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1991
● BSD, with a kernel, but sued by AT&T
● GNU without a kernel, but with code
generated independently
● Appearance of NetBSD (1991)
● Later FreeBSD (1993)
● And a little later OpenBSD (1997)
● 1994: Agreement of AT&T and the UC
Berkeley. CSRG disappears.
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In parallel
● Growing of Internet
● Thanks to Internet, the libre software
movement grew as well
● At the same time, thanks to libre
software, Internet grew as well
● Both, at the technical level (network
routers, etc) and the conceptual level
(free sharing of information)
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This open process encouraged and led to the
exchange of information.
Technical development is only successful when
information is allowed to flow freely and easily
between the parties involved.
Encouraging participation is the main
principle that made the development of the Net
possible.
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The quest for a kernel
● All the ingredients ready
● BSD
● GNU
● Internet
● July 1991: a Finnish undergraduate
student begins the Linux project
● Usable by 1994
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Late 90s
● The cathedral and the bazaar
● GNU/Linux distributions
● Business models and companies
● Explosive growth
● GNOME, KDE, Debian
● 1998: Creation of the Open Source
Initiative
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st
21 century
● Libre software becomes popular
● Politicians know who is Richard Stallman
● Initiatives in the Spanish public
administrations: GNU/Linex, Guadalinex
● OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Ubuntu
● In Spain, top activity stage of Hispalinux
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Explosive growth
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Explosive growth
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The future
● Threats
– Software patents
– Use of standards and open formats
– Poor knowledge
● libre software != gratis
● You see the word open everywhere
● Now, everything is open source
– “Standards” not so standard
● Libre software everywhere (from your
toaster to your mobile phone)
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Share your experience
● What was your first contact with libre
software?
● When did you first use libre software?
(even if you were not aware of it by that
time)
● What distributions have you used?
● Have you ever tried a BSD?
● Do you think that libre software has
progressed?
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