In the beginning was... hacker culture and free Internet software. They existed as outsiders. They were really known by few. But some knew of them and an idea started to grow... it was first only in one person's mind, then two, then it spread to the hacker culture and further into the business world.

The first two that the idea came to inspire was Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond and the year it happened was in 1997. The core of the idea itself was to let the free software evolve into something large enough to make its way into the world of business.

First a meeting took place. The hacker culture was summit-ed and the sound of their applauds accelerated to a crescendo. They loved the idea. They approved it. They supported it. So, the idea grew stronger in both height and length, just from the energy of this first summit of the hacker culture, back in the year of 1998.

Now the idea grew so strong that it started to spread further, and by the help of another person called by the name Chris Peterson, it got a name. The name it got was the Open Source. The idea was pleased, now it got a name and that was exactly what it needed to accelerate it's growth from childhood into full maturity.

The idea grew up, it expanded, introducing its name to a wide circle of people now when it's powers had been enlarged greatly. Next, it needed another name to melt together with. This with the purpose of expanding far enough to reach the distant world of business.

A new day took it's dawn and the idea, called by the name Open Source chose to connect with the well-known name Netscape. Netscape embraced the idea and willingly let its source code open up. That was the intention of the idea and the idea continued to grow, strengthened by conquering a new name. The name it conquered was Netscape.

Now many years have passed and the idea has grown old in age but maintaining its youthful essence by attracting more people and more names to itself. It has become mainstream. It has become large. It has become worldwide.

The world of business was not easy to conquer. Some parts of it tried to resist the idea. But the idea endured and with time it won. It won its way into the world of business, using many smaller paths. The paths it used to find its way into the world of business was to become parts of other software and software packages. This made it possible for the idea to let its roots spread wide and deep into the breeding ground of the world of software business and also into the entire world of business; the companies, the institutions and the individuals...

Recently the idea, now by the general public called by the name Open Source, attracted many software developers from all over the world and expanded into being used in clustering-, database-, desktop-, development-, enterprise-, financial-, games-, multimedia-, networking-, security-, storage-, sysAdmin- and VoIP-software. And, the idea with the name that when time went by, became well-known and recognized, if not also famous, even found its way into hardware, as drivers and more...

Have you ever heard a whisper, a sound, a thought about a free software? I'm sure that must have been the idea, trying to spread and grow.