In 1995 everything changed with the creation of the World Wide Web. Anything that could be digitized was digitized and entire industries changed. And with the digitization came tools to help everyone become a producer of digital content. From music to video, books to journalism, we pulled all the friction out of the content pipeline and democratized entire industries.
But the industry we never talk about is the one that was already digital – software. Software was democratized as well. We’ve shared software for as long as we’ve written software. By pulling the friction out of the pipeline around software and sharing it liberally through open source licensing, we’ve ended up in a completely new software industry over the past 20 years.
This talk presents the trends that got the industry to where it is, as well as ideas for the coming challenges for the next twenty years of open source software. It might be a cautionary tale.
5. 1950 1960 1970 200019901980 2010
Code sharing
At Princeton
IAS in late
1940s
IBM “SHARE”
Conf & Library
Begins 1953
DECUS
Conf & Library
Begins 1962
MIT Project
Athena Begins
1983
1BSD Released
1977
AT&T Shares
First UNIX tapes
early-70s
Free Software
Foundation
Launches 1985
DoJ vs IBM begins
“Software Bundling
is Anti-competitive”
1969
IBM response is to
unbundle HW, SW, &
services pricing
1st DoJ vs IBM
Consent Decree
“Hardware Bundling
is Anti-competitive”
1956
Open Source
Definition 1998
USENIX Begins
1975
Linus Releases
Linux 1991
Apache httpd
Released 1995
Apache Software
Foundation 1999
OSDL Forms
2000
OSDL Re-forms as
Linux Foundation
2007
U.S. Congress
Adds Computer
Software to
Copyright Law
1980
GCC
1987
emacs
1975
We’ve collaborated on software since we’ve written software
Writing good software is hard work
30. This has implications
There is likely a team with specialized roles
There is an added layer of communications
There are standards to be met and maintained
There needs to be reliable and repeatable delivery
31. This has implications
There is likely a team with specialized roles
There is an added layer of communications
There are standards to be met and maintained
There needs to be reliable and repeatable delivery
There are customers
There is a business to run
There are regulations that need to be served
There is money to be managed
38. Photo Credits
• Chem Lab on Flickr by theterrifictc
• Chem Factory on Flickr by BASF
• Shakespeare on Flickr by tonynetone
• Berlin Wall on Flickr by Daniel Antal
• Musicians on Flickr by Jorge Bernal
• Block Buster on Flickr by Jason Kuffer
• Newspapers on Flickr by Gary Thompson
• Television family on Flickr by Paul Townsend
• Computer Room on Flickr by Alex Muse
• Books by me
• Andreessen official photo from A16z.com
• Logos all belong to their respective owners