Free software

:This article is about Free Software as defined by the sociopolitical Free Software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. For other uses, see free software (disambiguation).

History

The term free software preceeded the term open source software. Software and code was often freely traded among hackers but in the 1980s owners starting asserting copyright over their code effectively closing off this free exchange. The advent of the free software movement and the term free software was created by Richard Stallman in response to the closing off of this exchange.

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A brief history of Free Software:

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• 1960s and 1970s - software was seen as an add-on supplied by mainframe vendors to make computers useful. Thus, programmers and developers frequently freely shared their software. This was especially common in large users groups, such as DECUS, the DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Users Group.
• Late 1970s - companies began routinely imposing restrictions on programmers with software license agreements.
• 1983 - Richard Stallman began the GNU project, founding the Free Software Foundation (FSF) two years later. http://www.gnu.org/fsf/fsf.html He introduced a "free software" definition and "copyleft", designed to ensure software freedom for all. http://cisn.metu.edu.tr/2002-6/free.php