• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

Anyone else see any humor in my having an obnoxiously long title for this post?

Personal computers only were really invented in 1976 with the release of the Apple I (and it was the Apple II that really made the market take off starting in 1977). The organization that incited this was the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of hobbyists in Silicon Valley in the mid-’70s who can be called responsible for bringing computing to the masses. Before this, computers were huge machines reserved for businesses or universities, and not devices that just anyone might have in the home. This group was all about sharing their designs and ideas. Even before them, the culture existed. I cannot give salient examples, but the open culture has always existed in parts of the tech world.

Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project (which led to the creation of GNU/Linux) in 1983, 2 years before Windows was first released (but after MS-DOS was around). Unix has been open-source since its creation. Linux has technically been around since 1991 when Linus Torvalds released the kernel), but Unix (specifically BSD Unix, the “free,” non-AT&T version) has been around since 1977. Unix was one of the, if not the, first powerful, free, complete operating/time-sharing system, and Linux was intended to be (and is) a compatible replacement for it, and is now even better and more capable for use by individuals for day-to-day computing.

The original code in Windows that handled the networking was taken right out of Unix. And, the modern (post-2000) Mac operating system is based upon Unix and mostly compatible with Unix and Linux software programs! Both software companies have benefitted from free operating systems in huge ways.

• See this previous post for examples of major open-source projects today.
• See the first paragraph of this previous post for more on the open-source movement.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.