Open source technologies can be traced back to the late 1970s when Richard Stallman, a former programmer at MIT A1 Laboratories, launched the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation.

The ultimate goal of the GNU project was to produce a free operating system. Since then there has been some significant GNU projects such as Apache (a www Server), Perl (interpreted program language) Mozilla (a www browser) and Linux (an open source operating system supported by companies such as Redhat Corporation).