这个情况不存在 ...
摘自 RMS 的维基：
> In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become the norm.
“proprietary software had existed before ... it would become the norm” 说明在 RMS 蹦出来之前，很有可能 proprietary 是少数，某种形式的 shared-source 或者类 open source 才是多数。
主要是包括我在内的大多数人对 Linux 之前的历史了解都比较有限，因此只能从个别资料中推测。感觉那个年代科研占计算机很大一部分用途 (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_free_and_open-source_software)，而学术界喜欢开源代码这个事一直都有。所以在本时间线里，开源应该是和计算机伴生的。而随着软件越来越复杂，专有软件逐渐崛起应该也是必然的。但是就算没有 RMS，也不代表所有软件都会是专有软件，依然会有人以不同的形式把自己的工作几乎无偿地开放出来，并且随着技术的发展，这种“开源软件”也会做的越来越 sophisticated，就像算法复杂度一样，渐进复杂度一直就在那，不同的实现只不过是“常数项”的问题而已。