1. What were the contributions of the two different groups established in the 1970s to the Open Source Software Movement?
a. The GNU project and the Free Software Foundation from the U.S. east coast.
A software freedom activist and computer programmer, Richard Stallman, believed that people should have the freedom to modify, study and use software. Free software is computer software that enables users the freedom to run that software for any purpose. Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985 and launched a free software project, the GNU project in 1983.
The GNU project’s goal was to ensure computer users freedom to use, share, study and modify the entire software including the operating system. This operating system would be based on the design of a Unix system which is a proprietary operating system. In 1991, Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel. With the combination of the Linux kernel and utilities already developed by the GNU project, the first operating system that was free known as Linux was created. The Free Software Foundation was founded by Richard Stallman in 1985 to promote the campaign of free software. The FSF supported the free software movement which sought the universal freedom to study distribute, create, and modify computer software.
b. The Computer Science Research Group from the U.S. west coast.
The Computer Science Research Group was a research group at the University of California Berkeley. The research group was committed to enhancing the original operation system from AT&T which became known as the “BSD Unix”.
2. What is the history of the "open source" software movement in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
In the early 1800s, BBS Source, a source code for software became available and in a way foreshadowed the Free Software Movement. Richard Stallman started the Free Software Movement in 1983 with the foundation of the GNU project. Richard Stallman also founded the...