| An Introduction to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS):
The "Open Source" concept started early in computer history. Computers were scarce and very expensive; systems were inefficient with limited processing power. Computers were useable only by engineers and scientists; the lay person could neither afford nor easily comprehend the computer's intricate technology. Code, or software, that operates the computer was just as scarce, and just as complex. As such, when someone designed code to complete a given task, this code, often times, was shared with other coders. The idea being that once shared, the code will assist someone else--no need to reinvent the wheel--and, the recipient coder could, and often did, improve the code. Sharing the source code was seen as a means to improvement and progress.
Then, after a complicated set of circumstances, in the summer of 1969, Ken Thompson of AT&T Bell Labs wrote UNIX on and old DEC PDP-7 minicomputer.. Along with Dennis Ritchie, who himself wrote the "C" computer language (ably assisted by Brian Kernighan), and Doug McIlroy, open source was to take on a greater significance.
Thompson put the UNIX code he had written onto magnetic disks and mailed them to friends and other coders, thereby starting the UNIX hacker culture. The code was made open to others for their use, where they could could modify, improve, and redistribute(to a limited audience). Eventually the source code became prevalent in the universities--MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, and other universities around the world.. UC Berkeley became a leader in Unix development that lead to the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) version of UNIX. AT&T had provided licenses that allowed free distribution to academia. Commercial and Government licenses would cost $21,000.1
UNIX was born, the UNIX philosophy took shape, and indeed, "open source" (in a fashion) flourished.
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