History and motivation
Free software

The report by the European Working Group on Open Source Software points out that software was "free" long before there was such a thing as proprietary software, a fact now forgotten due to the dominance of proprietary approaches in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, in the 1960s, computer manufacturers - led by IBM, but also Control Data - distributed the source code of their basic computer software, allowed users to modify this code to suit their needs and, to a certain extent, encouraged the submission of these modifications in return. However, this method of distributing software was not legally codified, and was essentially due to the fact that, at the time, hardware was the main source of added value for the IT industry. In-house software development...