I was thinking, there are people who think they invented free/open source software and are some kind of prodigy for doing so, i.e. Stallman, Eric S Raymond,
But wasn't it mathematicians, long ago, who released their math to the public as open source math texts?
AFAIK no mathematician put serious restrictions or patents on his math texts...
Why, for example, and a Math text or paper not be sold as shareware or patented..
So while we think open source and free software is new, isn't that the whole concept of Math, to share your math with other people without too many restrictions? And they did that back before humans had indoor plumbing.
The true inventors of open source??
Mathematicians, or scientists? Science is shared publicly and openly too..