"It wasn’t open source in the sense we know today, but it
was built for NASA under contract, then was tested, modified and
fine-tuned by NASA engineers in ways that are similar to open
source projects nowadays.
"“Well, in today's definition it was open source--the
source code was publicly available” to mission engineers,
said John “Jack” Garman, who was a 24-year-old NASA
computer engineer when Apollo 11 lifted off July 16, 1969, on its
way to the Moon. “But ‘open source’ in the Linux
sense generally means that anyone can contribute additions and
improvements, and of course that wasn't the case for the Apollo
software.”
"Garman helped test and re-write the software before Apollo 11
ever left the ground, then continued to monitor it while it was
used in the onboard computers. “The software was programmed
on IBM punch cards. They had 80-columns and were
‘assembled’ to instruction binary on mainframes... and
it took hours."
