Actually software was almost always free and public domain up until the early 1970’s as accountants realized they could extort more dollars by making software l

Actually software was almost always free and public domain up until the early 1970’s as accountants realized they could extort more dollars by making software licensing models. In 1983 Richard Stallman made the gnu copy left and fsf as a reaction to the role of aggressive sales jocks and bean counters in computing. The rest, is, of course, well know. But the 1950-1970 period was also, albeit less formalized, a heyday of more unfettered public domain development. I’d also note that concurrently in the 1980’s was the shareware movement, which didn’t generally distribute source but free binaries (or with nominal distribution costs to cover media etc). The moral of the story is accountants know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and if you really want to kill something of beauty, let an accountant be in charge. (Source: I’m married to an accountant - while a person I love, she can’t understand living for any other reason than counting money)