When Xerox donated a brand new laser printer to MIT in 1980, the corporate couldn’t have recognized that the machine would ignite a revolution.
Whereas the early many years of software program growth typically ran on a tradition of open entry, this new printer ran on inaccessible proprietary software program, a lot to the horror of Richard M. Stallman, then a 27-year-old programmer on the college.
Just a few years later, Stallman launched GNU, an working system designed to be a free different to one of many dominant working methods on the time: Unix. The free-software motion was born, with a easy premise: for the great of the world, all code needs to be open, with out restriction or industrial intervention.
Forty years later, tech firms are making billions on proprietary software program, and far of the expertise round us is inscrutable. However whereas Stallman’s motion could appear to be a failed experiment, the free and open-source software program motion isn’t solely alive and properly; it has change into a keystone of the tech trade. Read the full story.
—Rebecca Ackermann
Rebecca’s story is from the following upcoming situation of our print journal, which is all about ethics. In the event you don’t subscribe already, sign up to obtain a replica when it publishes.
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