The Linux kernel
At the expense of killing a few exploitative businesses, Linux created a better world for millions of programmers and the hundreds of millions of users that rely on the web staying free. It's hard to imagine an alternate reality where Linux doesn't exist but the internet does - we'd be relying on the BSD-likes to not get forked into commercial systems, which is a pretty unstable premise.
As you point out, BSD had existed since 1978.
Even so, you can't get the Linux kernel without a C compiler - which gets my vote! :)