Study of Open Source Software Movement

The term „software‟ was coined by John W. Tukey and he used it for the first time in 1958 in his article published in The American Mathematical Monthly (1958). However, the idea of software was devised by Alan Turing (1936) during his presentation on Turing Machine. Earlier, terms like „computer program‟ and „code‟ were in use. Cerazzi defines software as “a single entity, separate from the computer‟s hardware, that works with the hardware to solve a problem.” The early software, the so called „computer program‟ and „code‟, were installed or programmed in the computer during their configuration and it was a herculean task to change, delete, uninstall, and reinstall software on computer. In fact, initially software was part of computers and were not available separately. Computer manufacturers used to sell computer and software as a single entity.