On Feb. 3, 1998, a group of people met to discuss the need for a term that would help explain the concept of free software to businesses and individuals who didn’t understand what “free software” was. The term “open source” was created by Christine Peterson, who saw it as a way to distinguish the pragmatic idea of a code base that anyone could contribute to or modify from the larger, more philosophical goals of Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation.

Extreme Tech

So many great open source things have come out over the last 20 years. It’s fun to look back on this and see how many companies use open source Tech Republic has a great article on this as well.