1969: Creation of Unix
Unix, the operating system created at AT&T's Bell Labs in 1969, was never a free or open source OS. But its code was freely shared within the community of Unix hackers that evolved before AT&T commercialized the system in the early 1980s, and Unix became the OS that free and open source programmers sought to clone through open code. For these reasons, Unix was crucial in laying the foundations for what became open source.
Unix, the operating system created at AT&T's Bell Labs in 1969, was never a free or open source OS. But its code was freely shared within the community of Unix hackers that evolved before AT&T commercialized the system in the early 1980s, and Unix became the OS that free and open source programmers sought to clone through open code. For these reasons, Unix was crucial in laying the foundations for what became open source.
