From GNU to GitHub: what does the history of open source say about who decides?

Merge ConflictsPart 4 of 4

Who decides in an open source project, how they decide, and who can review the decision. Twelve projects, the same questions.

In this series 4 parts published
Merge Conflicts cover for the history of open source: 1.3, From GNU to GitHub, who decides? Records and a branch icon.

The history of open source usually gets told as a list of famous names. This post tells it as a paper trail instead. Seven dated records, from a 1983 Usenet post to the GitHub mirror WordPress keeps today, each answer two questions. Who made the call? And where can you still read it?

📮 How did the history of open source begin with one Usenet post?

On September 27, 1983, the GNU announcement, a message titled “new Unix implementation,” went out to two Usenet groups.1 It opened with two words: “Free Unix!”

verified

  • What happened: the post announced a plan “to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU.”2 Work would start “this Thanksgiving.” In fact, a note from the GNU Project says it began in January 1984.3
  • Who decided: one programmer at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, Richard Stallman, who signed it. His stated reason: “I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.”4
  • Where the record lives: gnu.org reproduces the original email “in its original form,” headers and all.5

Yes, the first line in the history of open source ends in an exclamation point. The same post promised to “give it away free,” and its footnote later called that wording careless. The free as in freedom post covers that footnote, so here we follow the paper.

History of open source as seven pinned cards, 1983 to today, each naming who decided, from a Usenet post to a GitHub mirror.
Seven records, one paper trail. Illustration made with ChatGPT at my direction.
Text description of the timeline

What this illustration shows

  • Seven paper cards hang from a purple string, left to right, under the title “Seven records, one paper trail.”
  • First, 1983: “A Usenet post.” Who: its signer. An envelope sits below.
  • Next, 1989: “GPL version 1.” Who: its publisher. A document with a padlock.
  • Then 1992: “Linux adopts the GPL.” Who: the code’s authors, by deadline. A penguin. The year follows the FSF’s dating.
  • After that, 1998: “The open source label.” Who: a strategy session. A paper tag.
  • In 2005: “Git’s first commit.” Who: the kernel’s developers. A branching tree of dots.
  • In 2008: “GitHub goes live.” Who: merge roles, then the platform owner. A loop of arrows.
  • Finally, today: “WordPress: Subversion, plus a GitHub mirror.” Who: committers via Trac. A small house with two doors.
  • At the bottom, the footer asks: “Who could say yes, and where can you still read it?”

📜 What did the GPL add to the history of free software, 1985 to 1989?

Next came an organization and a license. Both still exist, and both say who holds the pen.

verified

  • What happened: in 1985, the GNU Project’s founder writes, he “created the Free Software Foundation (FSF), a tax-exempt charity for free software development.”6 Then in February 1989, the FSF published version 1 of the GNU General Public License, or GPL.7
  • Who decided: the FSF holds the license text. The license itself says “changing it is not allowed,” while everyone may copy it word for word.8
  • Where the record lives: gnu.org keeps version 1 among its “Old versions of the GPL.”9

The GPL is a copyleft license. In the GNU Project’s words, copyleft requires “all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well.”10

analysis

Here’s the governance twist. The license that keeps every copy of a program changeable is itself a document nobody else may change. Only its publisher can write a new version. That’s not a flaw. It’s a decision about who decides, written into the license’s top line, and it comes back again and again in the history of open source.

🐧 How did Linux go from not for a fee to the GPL?

The Linux kernel started with its own homemade terms. Its first release notes are dated 1991.11

verified

  • What happened: version 0.01 said “You may not distibute this for a fee” (the typo is theirs).12 Then the notes for version 0.12 announced “The Linux copyright will change.”13 The stated reason was “a couple of requests to make it compatible with the GNU copyleft.”14
  • Who decided: the kernel’s author proposed the change “pending approval of the persons who have helped write code.”15 Anyone with a grievance could “mail me.” Otherwise, “The GNU copyleft takes effect as of the first of February.”16
  • Where the record lives: kernel.org keeps both release notes in its folder of historic versions.1718

analysis

That’s a whole consent process in one paragraph: a proposal, the people affected, a way to object and a deadline. Under that rule, no reply counted as yes. It’s efficient, and it’s also the kind of rule you’d want written down before anyone tests it.

source-derived

The 0.12 notes don’t print a year. However, the FSF’s history puts the change in 1992. It says Linux “was proprietary at first, but in 1992, he made it free software.”19 The FSF also names the result differently. “We call this system version GNU/Linux,” it writes, “to express its composition as a combination of the GNU system with Linux as the kernel.”20

🏷️ Who named open source in 1998, and who keeps its definition?

The phrase “open source” came out of a meeting. The Open Source Initiative, or OSI, tells it on its own history page.21

verified

  • What happened: “The ‘open source’ label was created at a strategy session held on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto, California.”22 The OSI places that session “shortly after the announcement of the release of the Netscape source code.”23
  • Who decided: the people at that session, and then a new nonprofit. Two of them founded the OSI “in late February 1998,” the same page says.24
  • Where the record lives: opensource.org, where a license “must go through the Open Source Initiative’s license review process” before the OSI approves it.25

So by 1998, the history of open source had two organizations keeping two definitions of nearly the same set of licenses. In other words, the second name brought a second keeper. 1.2 compares the two definitions side by side, each in its own words.

🌳 Why does the history of open source include a version control tool?

Version control is the software that records every change to a project’s code. Because it holds the history, it also shapes who can change it. Git’s own book tells how git began.26

source-derived

  • What happened: from 2002, the book says, the Linux kernel used “a proprietary DVCS called BitKeeper.” DVCS stands for distributed version control system. Then in 2005, “the tool’s free-of-charge status was revoked.”27
  • Who decided: the book credits “the Linux development community (and in particular Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux)” with building a replacement.28 One stated goal was to be “Fully distributed.”29
  • Where the record lives: in git itself. Its first commit, dated April 7, 2005, carries the message “Initial revision of “git”, the information manager from hell.”30

unknown

The book is the git project’s own account. This post didn’t read the account of the company behind BitKeeper, so its side of 2005 is unknown here.

Still, a commit message that calls your own tool the information manager from hell is the most honest changelog in this post.

🐙 What changed when GitHub put open source history on a company’s platform?

Git made copies cheap. Then GitHub made them clickable.

verified

  • What happened: “GitHub is officially live,” its launch post said on April 10, 2008.31 GitHub’s docs define a fork as a copy of “another repository, called the upstream repository.”32 Meanwhile, a pull request is a proposal “to merge code changes into a project.”33
  • Who decided: two layers. Inside a project, GitHub’s role table lets the Write, Maintain and Admin roles merge a pull request, while Read and Triage can’t.34 Above the project sits the platform’s owner. On June 4, 2018, Microsoft announced it would acquire GitHub “for $7.5 billion.”35
  • Where the record lives: in each project’s git history, and in the platform’s own records of issues and reviews. Microsoft’s release said GitHub had “more than 28 million developers.”36

Microsoft’s stated plan came in the same release. GitHub “will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries.”37

analysis

A fork still means you can copy a project and leave. Even so, a fork made with GitHub’s button stays on GitHub’s servers. That’s the newest layer in the history of open source: your exit is real, and the building is still someone else’s.

The pantry developer, in a wheelchair, opens a pull request at Merge and Write role; the coordinator carries a Fork box out.
Two layers of who decides. Illustration made with ChatGPT at my direction.
Text description of the two layers

What this illustration shows

  • The pantry’s volunteer developer, who uses a manual wheelchair, works at a folding table with a laptop.
  • On the screen, a “Merge” button sits beside a small badge that reads “Write role.” In other words, merging depends on a role.
  • Meanwhile, the pantry coordinator carries a box labeled “Fork” toward a doorway.
  • However, the doorway, the table and both people sit inside the outline of one building. A sign on its roof reads “Platform owner.”
  • Below the scene, the caption reads: “Your exit is real. The building is someone else’s.”
  • The scene is fictional shorthand for the two layers this section describes.

🧩 Where does WordPress sit in the history of open source?

WordPress lives in two eras at once. Here’s the record, one document at a time:

  • When it starts: WordPress.org says the project has “come a long way since 2003.” Its release list begins with version 0.7 on May 27, 2003.38
  • Where core code lives: “The canonical WordPress repository is managed using Subversion,” the core handbook says.39 Subversion, or SVN, is another version control system.
  • What the GitHub copy is: “This repository is just a mirror of the WordPress subversion repository,” the wordpress-develop README says.40 The handbook adds that “pull requests submitted to GitHub will not be merged there.”41
  • How a GitHub patch counts: patches can be reviewed in pull requests, the handbook says, “but they must be associated with a Trac ticket.”42 Trac is WordPress’s ticket tracker for core.
  • Where the block editor lives: Gutenberg, the block editor project, calls its GitHub repository “the development hub for the WordPress Gutenberg project.”43

🧭 Why did the block editor start on GitHub?

verified

  • The rule it followed: since WordPress 3.7, new features start as plugins. The core handbook says a feature gets “built, tested, refined, and polished” first. Only then is it “considered as a merge candidate.”44
  • When it started: GitHub’s records show the WordPress/gutenberg repository was created on February 3, 2017.45

In October 2017, Gutenberg developer Riad Benguella explained the GitHub choice on their own blog. “Usually WordPress development happens in WordPress Trac, through tickets and patches,” they wrote, “while featured plugins usually happen in GitHub.”46 They pointed to an earlier feature plugin, the REST API, where “Contributions to the project diminished a lot once the plugin was merged.” Their read: “Trac has proven to be a huge barrier at entry for several developers already familiar with GitHub and its niceties.”47

🗄️ Why do core, plugins and themes stay on Subversion and Trac?

The stated reasons come first, in the words of the people who gave them.

verified

  • Core: in December 2018, core developer Helen Hou-Sandi wrote that a move isn’t just making the GitHub mirror canonical. It means “imagining what kind of change would be a net benefit to the core development process.”48 The same post named “continued participation when projects move from plugins and GitHub into core and Trac” as a pain point. It also said: “There is no current planned timeline.”49
  • Plugins and themes: in a reply on that post, she gave her opinion that “the .org repos should remain the source of truth for serving installs/updates.” She added that the repos are monorepos “because SVN supports subdirectory checkouts.”50
  • Plugin authors: the plugin handbook says “SVN and the Plugin Directory are a release repository.” It adds: “Unlike GitHub, SVN is meant to be a release system, not a development system.”51
  • A bridge, not a move: in February 2020, Trac began showing linked GitHub pull requests on tickets. The announcement said “this is not a signal of any decision to start moving WordPress to Git, GitHub, or GitLab.”52

🗂️ Why are there several Trac sites?

verified

  • Core Trac: tickets and patches for WordPress itself, the route the core handbook describes above.53
  • Meta Trac: bug reports for the WordPress.org sites. Its home page explains: “We used to manage the WordPress.org site on the same Trac as WordPress core is developed.”54
  • Themes Trac: the review queue. “A ticket is automatically created when a new theme is uploaded,” the Themes Team handbook says.55

analysis

So Trac and Subversion stay where the record ties them to shipping: installs, updates and review queues. Meanwhile, newer team projects, such as the 2022 WordPress.org redesign, do “most of the code development” in GitHub repositories.56 This post found no single decision covering every team. It also didn’t search the Making WordPress Slack, so any discussion there is unknown here.

🔀 What do two routes into WordPress mean for you?

analysis

So a core change still lands through a Trac ticket and Subversion, while the block editor works in pull requests. If you contribute, you’ll meet both. Neither tells you yet who decides what merges. That’s Season 2’s question.

I contribute to WordPress, including as Training Team faculty, so weigh this section with that in mind. Every relationship that bears on this series is one click away.

Every relationship that bears on this series
  • Pantheon, my current employer, is a WordPress and Drupal host.
  • GoDaddy, where I managed its Five for the Future contributors until July 2026.
  • FAIR, where I sit on the FAIR Package Manager Technical Steering Committee.
  • The WPOCC, where I’m a co-founding board member.
  • The WordPress Training Team, where I’m a faculty member and a former team rep.
  • Questions I asked on stage at WordCamp US 2024, the WordCamp Europe 2025 fireside and WordCamp Canada 2025.
  • My own words appear in court exhibits in WPEngine v. Automattic (Dkt. 18-28, 107-4, 18-5 and 69-16). The series reports that litigation in pairs.

What this short history of open source leaves out

Seven records can’t hold the whole story. Here’s what this one skips, and why:

  • Before 1983: Unix and the sharing culture around it. The series hasn’t fetched those primary records yet.
  • Other projects: BSD, Apache, Debian, Perl and Python each have their own founding documents. This series makes no claim about a project until it reads that project’s own documents.
  • Other code hosts: SourceForge, GitLab and the rest. They belong in a fuller history than this one.

❓ Which history questions can you ask about any project?

Pick one project you use, then ask its record the five questions this history of open source kept asking. Mark each answer documented, unclear, or a gap I accept:

  1. Start. Who announced it, when, and is that announcement still online?
  2. License. Who publishes the license, and who may write its next version?
  3. Change of terms. When the license changed, who was asked, and how could they object?
  4. Merge rights. Who can merge a change, and where is that list written?
  5. Platform. Who owns the servers that hold the code, and can you leave with a full copy?

Questions 2 and 4 match the license and decision columns of the series’ comparison, which Season 2 fills in for twelve projects. After all, the history of open source isn’t only who wrote the code. It’s also who could say yes.

Where this post sits in the series

This post follows 1.2, Free as in freedom or free as in beer: which free does open source promise? It uses the labels on the Merge Conflicts methods page. Next up is 1.4, “How open source licenses work.” Follow along on the Merge Conflicts series page.

Footnotes (56)
  1. Richard Stallman. “Initial Announcement.” GNU Project. Posted to net.unix-wizards and net.usoft, 1983-09-27; reproduced on gnu.org with the GNU Project’s note. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  2. Richard Stallman. “Initial Announcement.” GNU Project. Posted to net.unix-wizards and net.usoft, 1983-09-27; reproduced on gnu.org with the GNU Project’s note. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  3. Richard Stallman. “Initial Announcement.” GNU Project. Posted to net.unix-wizards and net.usoft, 1983-09-27; reproduced on gnu.org with the GNU Project’s note. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  4. Richard Stallman. “Initial Announcement.” GNU Project. Posted to net.unix-wizards and net.usoft, 1983-09-27; reproduced on gnu.org with the GNU Project’s note. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  5. Richard Stallman. “Initial Announcement.” GNU Project. Posted to net.unix-wizards and net.usoft, 1983-09-27; reproduced on gnu.org with the GNU Project’s note. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  6. Richard Stallman. “The GNU Project.” GNU Project. Originally published in the book Open Sources; page updated 2025-01-20. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. Sections “Commencing the project,” “The Free Software Foundation” and “The GNU HURD.” ↩︎
  7. Free Software Foundation. “GNU General Public License, version 1.” gnu.org. February 1989. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. Header and preamble. ↩︎
  8. Free Software Foundation. “GNU General Public License, version 1.” gnu.org. February 1989. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. Header and preamble. ↩︎
  9. Free Software Foundation. “GNU General Public License, version 1.” gnu.org. February 1989. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. Header and preamble. ↩︎
  10. Free Software Foundation. “What is Copyleft?” GNU Project. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  11. Linus Torvalds. “Release notes for Linux v0.01.” kernel.org, historic versions. Copyright line dated 1991; file listed 1993-06-23. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.01. Accessed 2026-11-04. Quoted with its original spelling. ↩︎
  12. Linus Torvalds. “Release notes for Linux v0.01.” kernel.org, historic versions. Copyright line dated 1991; file listed 1993-06-23. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.01. Accessed 2026-11-04. Quoted with its original spelling. ↩︎
  13. Linus Torvalds. “Release notes for Linux v0.12.” kernel.org, historic versions. No year in the file; file listed 1993-06-23. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.12. Accessed 2026-11-04. Section “COPYRIGHT.” ↩︎
  14. Linus Torvalds. “Release notes for Linux v0.12.” kernel.org, historic versions. No year in the file; file listed 1993-06-23. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.12. Accessed 2026-11-04. Section “COPYRIGHT.” ↩︎
  15. Linus Torvalds. “Release notes for Linux v0.12.” kernel.org, historic versions. No year in the file; file listed 1993-06-23. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.12. Accessed 2026-11-04. Section “COPYRIGHT.” ↩︎
  16. Linus Torvalds. “Release notes for Linux v0.12.” kernel.org, historic versions. No year in the file; file listed 1993-06-23. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.12. Accessed 2026-11-04. Section “COPYRIGHT.” ↩︎
  17. Linus Torvalds. “Release notes for Linux v0.01.” kernel.org, historic versions. Copyright line dated 1991; file listed 1993-06-23. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.01. Accessed 2026-11-04. Quoted with its original spelling. ↩︎
  18. Linus Torvalds. “Release notes for Linux v0.12.” kernel.org, historic versions. No year in the file; file listed 1993-06-23. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.12. Accessed 2026-11-04. Section “COPYRIGHT.” ↩︎
  19. Richard Stallman. “The GNU Project.” GNU Project. Originally published in the book Open Sources; page updated 2025-01-20. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. Sections “Commencing the project,” “The Free Software Foundation” and “The GNU HURD.” ↩︎
  20. Richard Stallman. “The GNU Project.” GNU Project. Originally published in the book Open Sources; page updated 2025-01-20. https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html. Accessed 2026-11-04. Sections “Commencing the project,” “The Free Software Foundation” and “The GNU HURD.” ↩︎
  21. Open Source Initiative. “History of the OSI.” opensource.org. https://opensource.org/history. Accessed 2026-11-04. The page names the person who suggested the term and the OSI’s two founders. ↩︎
  22. Open Source Initiative. “History of the OSI.” opensource.org. https://opensource.org/history. Accessed 2026-11-04. The page names the person who suggested the term and the OSI’s two founders. ↩︎
  23. Open Source Initiative. “History of the OSI.” opensource.org. https://opensource.org/history. Accessed 2026-11-04. The page names the person who suggested the term and the OSI’s two founders. ↩︎
  24. Open Source Initiative. “History of the OSI.” opensource.org. https://opensource.org/history. Accessed 2026-11-04. The page names the person who suggested the term and the OSI’s two founders. ↩︎
  25. Open Source Initiative. “Licenses.” opensource.org. https://opensource.org/licenses. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  26. Scott Chacon and Ben Straub. “A Short History of Git.” Pro Git, 2nd edition, section 1.2. git-scm.com. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-A-Short-History-of-Git. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  27. Scott Chacon and Ben Straub. “A Short History of Git.” Pro Git, 2nd edition, section 1.2. git-scm.com. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-A-Short-History-of-Git. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  28. Scott Chacon and Ben Straub. “A Short History of Git.” Pro Git, 2nd edition, section 1.2. git-scm.com. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-A-Short-History-of-Git. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  29. Scott Chacon and Ben Straub. “A Short History of Git.” Pro Git, 2nd edition, section 1.2. git-scm.com. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-A-Short-History-of-Git. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  30. Linus Torvalds. Commit e83c516, “Initial revision of “git”, the information manager from hell.” git/git repository. Authored 2005-04-07 22:13:13 UTC. https://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290. Accessed 2026-11-04. Date read from GitHub’s commit API. ↩︎
  31. Chris Wanstrath. “We Launched.” The GitHub Blog. 2008-04-10; updated 2019-01-04. https://github.blog/news-insights/the-library/we-launched/. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  32. GitHub. “About forks.” GitHub Docs. https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/working-with-forks/about-forks. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  33. GitHub. “About pull requests.” GitHub Docs. https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/about-pull-requests. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  34. GitHub. “Repository roles for an organization.” GitHub Docs. https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/managing-user-access-to-your-organizations-repositories/managing-repository-roles/repository-roles-for-an-organization. Accessed 2026-11-04. Table row “Merge a pull request.” ↩︎
  35. Microsoft. “Microsoft to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion.” Microsoft News Center. 2018-06-04. https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-acquire-github-for-7-5-billion/. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  36. Microsoft. “Microsoft to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion.” Microsoft News Center. 2018-06-04. https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-acquire-github-for-7-5-billion/. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
  37. Microsoft. “Microsoft to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion.” Microsoft News Center. 2018-06-04. https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-acquire-github-for-7-5-billion/. Accessed 2026-11-04. ↩︎
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