There are a lot of things in our society that we take for granted but are essential for upward mobility, giving people more economic freedom and opportunities.
If you want to be a carpenter, plumber or an electrician, you first learn the requisite skills, and then with a few tools, you can become quite valuable to people, putting in doors, putting in a faucet, or wiring up a light. The barrier to doing this is mainly acquiring the abilities and a relatively small investment in equipment. But imagine what it would be like if those tools could only be rented out from large corporations, where the barrier to becoming a tradesperson was very much higher. Instead of an electric drill costing $40, it cost $400,000. The only people that could do these jobs would be ones employed by big companies who would be able to control the salaries of workers and the costs to the consumer. This is the way it used to be with information technology.
From mainframes to personal computers
would cost, in today's terms, tens of millions of dollars, but following Moore’s , the cost of equipment dropped exponentially. In the early 1980s, the first personal began to rapidly gain in popularity. Before the advent of PCs, if you wanted to become a software developer, you couldn’t simply learn how to code, you also needed access to an expensive mainframe computer to do software development. This meant working for a large corporation, who would employ you to write code and then sell the code for a high price. But with a PC, you had access to the equipment, but you still wouldn’t be able to code. You still needed to buy expensive software to do the most basic things necessary, such software that takes what you wrote and translates it into machine-readable . These things are generally called “ ”. Compilers aren’t software the average consumer would be interested in, but are essential for software developers and were only available to companies or individuals rich enough to afford them.
Funnily enough, in the 1950s and 60s, computer software was largely in the domain of government and academic researchers who freely gave away the that they developed. But, by the late 70s, corporations started charging hefty licensing fees. Not only that, but the source code for programs was no longer made available and instead, only the highly-obfuscated machine-readable instructions were provided. And, if there was an upgrade to the operating and a printer driver stopped working, the consumer often had to pay for it as there was no one besides the company that had access to the code to fix it. This became an additional revenue stream for large corporations. All of this irked some people who could see that this was stifling software development and creativity.
The birth of the free software movement
A few intrepid software engineers began to create and distribute source code so that anyone could study and improve on other people’s code, and do this for free. As this grew, coders were able to create free operating systems. The best known example of this is .
Linux is a very stable and efficient operating system that is the heart of most devices we use today. For example, the Android operating is built on top of Linux and other open tools, and is used by about 2.5 billion people today. And high-end expensive server farms, such as Google or Amazon use Linux. Google operating system is also built on top of Linux. Apple’s operating system kernel, OS , is also open source. Open source has proven to have had a transformative effect on software and our everyday lives.
Getting technology into the hands of many
There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects of every size, and this has allowed people from developing countries to move into software development. The price of a computer has gone down to tens of , and while the price of internet connections is still out of reach of many people, it is still affordable to many more than had been in the case twenty years ago. This has dramatically increased the opportunities for people around the world, and has led to an explosion of businesses.
If you’re a small business and want to build a website, you can do so using exclusively open source technology. Without such software, the price of it could make a web presence out of reach for most businesses. Many talented people in can now afford computer systems that will allow them to collaborate with someone, say, in Sydney to do web development. This has contributed greatly to the rise in the economic growth and standard of living in many developing countries, and continues to do so. Open source has contributed greatly to the goal of equalising opportunity across the globe. It has also allowed for an explosion in creativity by allowing people with imagination to implement their ideas. We can see this in all of the marvelous diversity in technology that we have, as compared to just a few decades ago.
Open source is better for everyone
Most people in the tech industry have come to understand that the shortsighted focus on the immediate gains of proprietary technology have been detrimental to the long term growth of their industry. The more idealistic framework of open source software leads to long lasting benefits for everyone, and this ultimately leads to more economic growth and prosperity.
In writing the history of our time, it would not be an exaggeration to put the open source among the top ten innovations that shaped the explosion in technology that we are witnessing. And it has also had a profound impact on social mobility.