One of the pivotal moments in the rise of free software was 22 January 1998, when the following statement appeared: "Netscape Communications Corporation today announced bold plans to make the source code for the next generation of its highly popular Netscape Communicator client software available for free licensing on the Internet..."...

"Anyone remember this? ...«Netscape Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: NSCP) today announced bold plans to make the source code for the next generation of its highly popular Netscape Communicator client software available for free licensing on the Internet. The company plans to post the source code beginning with the first Netscape Communicator 5.0 developer release, expected by the end of the first quarter of 1998...»"

Version 2 of the General Public License ("GPL 2") has led a long and prosperous life in the software community since its release in 1991. It has been embraced by software developers and used more than any other free software license.

"An objection I've had to many programming books and web sites is that they don't make sample code available under a free software license. This is within the rights of the author, of course, but it seems counter to the spirit of teaching and sharing knowledge to restrict the use of example code.

" The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program which is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users’ freedom.

"...In 1998, some of the people in the free software community began using the term "open source software" instead of "free software" to describe what they do. The term "open source" quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable. The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with different views and goals, although we can and do work together on some practical projects..."

There is no doubt that 3 February 1998 was a historic day. For it was then, at a meeting in Mountain View, that a small group led by Eric Raymond came up with the term “open source” as an alternative to the description “free software”. The question is, will history count 21 June 2007 as another such pivotal moment – the day that Open Source 2.0 was born?

RMS: «When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes [...] As the advocates of open source draw new users into our community, we free software activists have to work even more to bring the issue of freedom to those new users' attention.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), today announced that it has carefully reviewed the lineage of the open source Atheros wireless driver for Linux and determined which portions can be distributed under the ISC license (also known as the 2-clause BSD license).