The O'Reilly network has a new article today dealing with "free software" - what it is, what it isn't and where it really came from.

Today, free software is a large body of high-quality code on which much of the internet depends for critical functions, and it constitutes the core operating system for an increasing number of desktop machines as well. But free software is much more than just a collection of programs. It is also a political movement, a programming methodology, and a business model--although not necessarily to the same people at the same time. Indeed, even the term free software is controversial; as we'll see later, some people prefer to call it open source software. The story of how free software became so technologically successful, even as it became ideologically fractious, starts in the early days of the computer industry.

Of course, software started off free, people just sharing it because they wanted to show what they'd done and let other people enjoy it. Then, like any good thing, someone decided to try to make money off of it. Thus the computer software industry was born. Fortunately, things have swung back the other way, and Open Source software has really taken root.

I don't know where PHP would be today if it wasn't for this movement. I wonder if it would even exist at all...