How Open Source Ate Software: Understand the Open Source Movement and So Much More

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021

G. HaffHow Open Source Ate Softwarehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6800-1_5

5. Open Source’s Connection to the Past

Gordon Haff¹  

(1)

Lancaster, MA, USA

 

Open source took its present form in part because of some of the specific ways in which the computer industry and its surrounding environment developed. But open source also has roots in how companies have long collaborated—and innovation has taken place. Know-how and intellectual property have long been informally shared, even absent official sanctioned processes, throughout much of history. Researchers have also studied how communication takes place and how people are motivated since long before there ...