The 4C System began back in 2007 when Phil Reed and Michael Hammes of Ronin Arts set forth to design a rules set to allow for commercial, and non-commercial, publication of supplements that would be compatible with the system it was designed to emulate. Much of their progress was cataloged on the Ronin Arts Web Forums under the title of FASERIP, the well known nickname of the originating system. Take some time to peruse the threads there if you're interested in how 4C came to be.

Apparently, the Ronin Arts forums have been shut down. This is an unfortunate circumstance as there was a lot of inside information about the beginnings of 4C. Hopefully they will be reopened some day.