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ExplainerYahoo closes GeoCities: how the web lost millions of home pagesYahoo bought GeoCities for billions in 1999 and switched it off a decade later. The closure became a turning point for web preservation.ExplainerThe Storm worm: the botnet that started with a weather headlineIn January 2007 an email about deadly storms in Europe spread a Trojan that built one of the largest peer-to-peer botnets of its time.ExplainerGPLv3: how the free software licence was rewrittenAfter 18 months of public drafting, the Free Software Foundation published version 3 of the GNU General Public License in June 2007.ExplainerThe UK identity card scheme: from Act of Parliament to shredded registerBritain legislated for national ID cards backed by a central biometric register, then abolished the whole scheme within five years.ExplainerThe netbook era: small, cheap laptops that briefly drove PC growthThe Asus Eee PC started a boom in low-cost mini laptops that propped up PC sales, until tablets and thinner laptops took their place.

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Open source

Open source went from a mailing-list movement to the default way much of the internet is built. Along the way it fought over licences, patents and whether governments and businesses could trust code nobody sells.

Start here for the licence changes, company deals and adoption debates that shaped free and open-source software.

Timeline

  1. 1991Linus Torvalds announces the Linux kernel.
  2. 1998The term “open source” is coined and Netscape releases its browser source code.
  3. 2006Microsoft and Novell sign a patent and interoperability agreement that alarms the free software community.
  4. 2007The GNU General Public License version 3 is published.

Explainers