Almost 25
Almost 25 years after Richard Stallman (27 September 1983) set out to create a Unix like system that would be completely open and hackable while giving anyone the right to modify & distribute the complete work.
The innovative GPL software license followed a few years later. This license was the answer to a very big threat to free software at the time. Stallman took notice of the arrival of a new kind of software company. The suit-driven corporations who were trying to make a fast buck on changed and mostly buggy software taken from people with a completely different view on what should happen with their work.

Before companies as Microsoft existed, software was something that had always been open. Everybody had the option to look inside and find out what makes it tick, just the same like you can do with your car and learn from it in the process.

A small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind
A giant leap indeed. It was by the GPL licence that we today haven open-source alternatives to the corporate products. For the first time in history, there are complete Operating Systems which outperform their commercial rivals in speed and usability.

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