The 10 oldest, significant open-source programs

Does open-source software still seem "new" to you? Think again, its roots go back decades.

Python is only one of many important open-source programs that are more than 20-years old. Today, open-source software is everywhere but many peple still think of it as being relatively new. It's not. Open-source software actually goes back decades.

Before beginning our journey in the way-back machine though we should go over our terminology. "Open source," the phrase, only goes back to February 3, 1998. The phrase was deliberately chosen to separate the more pragmatic open-source supporters from the more idealistic "free software" community members. Gallons of ink and gigabytes of pixels has been spilled on debating the differences between these two, but for my purposes I'm talking about programs that qualify by either definition.

Both concepts were actually used long before proprietary software showed up. As Richard M. Stallman, (rms) free software's founder noted, "When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community; it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as cooking."...

So, with no further adieu, from the most recent to the oldest, here's my list of older significant open-source projects.

1. Linux: August 25, 1991...
2. Python: February 20, 1991...
3. GNU C Library (glibc): February 1988...
4. Perl: December 18, 1987...
5. GNU C compiler (gcc): March 22, 1987...
6. GNU Emacs: 1984...
7. X Window System: 1983...
8. BRL-CAD: Dec 16, 1983...
9. First Berkeley Software Distribution (1BSD) Unix: March 9, 1978...
10. VistA: 1975...