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The open source movement is an offshoot of the free software movement that advocates open-source software as an alternative label for free software, primarily on pragmatic rather than philosophical grounds.The movement was founded in 1998 by John maddog Hall , Larry Augustin , Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, and others. Raymond is probably the single person most identified with the movement; he was and remains its self-described principal "theorist", but does not claim to lead it in any exclusive sense. In contrast with the free software movement, which has always been essentially directed by a single figure ( Richard Stallman), the open source movement is "steered" by a loose collegium of elders that includes Raymond, its other co-founders, and such notables as Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, and Guido van Rossum.
The founders were dissatisfied with what they saw as the "confrontational attitude" of the free software movement, and favored advocating free software exclusively on the grounds of technical superiority (a claim previously made by Raymond in his essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar) It was hoped that "open source" and the associated propaganda would become a more persuasive argument to businesses. Raymond's comment was "If you want to change the world, you have to co-opt the people who write the big checks." ( Cygnus Support had been pursuing exactly this approach for a number of years already, but not advertising it widely.)
The group adopted the Open Source Definition for open-source software, based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines. They also established the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as a steward organization for the movement. However, they were unsuccessful in their attempt to secure a trademarkSee also: brand Bass Red Triangle, was the first trademark registered in Britain in 1876. A trademark ( Commonwealth English: trade mark is a distinctive name, phrase, symbol, design, picture, or style used by a business to identify itself and its product for "open source", to act as an imprimatur and to prevent misuse of the term. Despite
this, the OSI developed considerable influence in the corporate sphere and has been able to hold abuse of the term to a tolerable minimum through vigorous jawboning. With the FSF, it has become one of the hacker community's two principal advocacy organizations.
The early period of the open-source movement coincided with and partly drove the dot-com boom of 1998-2000, and saw a large growth in the popularity of LinuxThis article is about Linux-based operating systems, GNU/Linux, and related topics. See Linux kernel for the kernel itself. See Linux (washing powder) for the Swiss brand of washing powder. Tux, a plump penguin, is the official Linux mascot Linux is the n and the formation of many "open-source-friendly" companies. The movement also caught the attention of the mainstream software industry, leading to open-source software offerings by established software companies such as CorelCorel Corporation is a computer software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by Michael Cowpland in 1985, who intended it to be a research laboratory ("Corel" is an abbreviation of "COwpland REsearch Laboratory"). The company (Corel Linux), Sun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems is a Silicon Valley-based computer, semiconductor and software manufacturer. Sun's products include computer servers and workstations based on the SPARC processor, the SunOS and Solaris operating systems, the NFS network file system, the ( StarOfficeStarOffice (also known as StarSuite is Sun Microsystems's commercial office suite software package. History StarOffice was originally developed by the German company StarDivision, founded by Marco Borries in 1986. The development of the integrated StarOff), and IBM ( OpenAFSOpenAFS is an open source implementation of the Andrew file system (AFS). AFS was originally developed at CMU, and developed as a commercial product by the Transarc Corporation, which was subsequenly acquired by IBM. At LinuxWorld on 15 August 2000, IBM a). By the time the dot-com boom busted in 2001, many
of the early hopes of open-source advocates had already borne fruit, and the movement continued from strength to strength in the cost-cutting climate of the 2001-2003 recession.
