Hello Scott,

The IBM SHARE software library of the mid-1950s is both earlier and a better parallel with the practices associated with today’s open source software efforts. This included a source dissemination mechanism, standards for coding and machine configuration, mechanism for bug reporting, creation of ad-hoc volunteer groups, etc. This is discussed in the classic A. Akera, "Voluntarism and the Fruits of Collaboration," Technology and Culture, vol. 42, no. 4, October 2001, pp. 710-736.

However, I think you would need to step back and pick a meaningful definition of “open source” before you try to follow this question further. On a literal level the distribution of open code is older than the distribution of closed code (i.e. executable without source). For one thing it took several years for programmers to adopt high level languages and symbolic assemblers and thus create an important difference between the two. It’s also true that plenty of pieces of commercial code were distributed with source in the early days of software products and bundled software. But if we read “open” as “FLOSS” in this question then it’s still true that the free exchange of code is much older than the commercial licensing of code.

So, to be honest, the meaningful question is really “What is the first appearance of closed source.”

Best wishes,

Tom

From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Scott Guthery
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 2:41 PM
To: members@sigcis.org
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] History of Open Source

In re the history of computer science:

A candidate for the first appearance of open source might be Algorithm 1. QuadI by R.J. Herbold of NBS which appeared in the February 1960 issue of the Communications of the ACM.

Might anyone have suggestion for an earlier candidate?

Cheers, Scott