![]() ![]() By the turn of the millennium, FOSS developers had created the GNU/Linux operating system and several other significant products. In the 1980s, largely due to the activities of MIT programmer Richard Stallman, a discourse of "free software" emerged in opposition to the perceived commercialization of hitherto widely available code, in particular the Unix operating system developed at Bell Labs. ![]() Software soon became commercialized, of course, but traditions of openness persisted, notably in universities. Electronic computers were originally sold without software and users collaborated to exchange information and code, as the name of the 1950s IBM user group SHARE suggests. "Free" signifies liberty as well as the absence of cost, and "open source" means that the secrets of the software's code are exposed. Typically, FOSS can be used, modified, and redistributed without the hindrance of, or payment to, its original authors. The term "free and open source software" (FOSS) does not primarily refer to software written for a specific application or to a particular approach to software production, but rather to the manner of its distribution. ![]()
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