Is open source software free?
Free and open-source software
"Free and open-source software" (FOSS) is an umbrella term for software that is simultaneously considered both Free software and open-source software. FOSS (free and open-source software) allows the user to inspect the source code and provides a high level of control of the software's functions compared to proprietary software. The term "free software" does not refer to the monetary cost of the software at all, but rather whether the license maintains the software user's civil liberties ("free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”). There are a number of related terms and abbreviations for free and open-source software (FOSS or F/OSS), or free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS or F/LOSS -- FLOSS is the FSF-preferred term).
List of free and open-source software packages
Some of the open-source applications are also the basis of commercial products, shown in the List of commercial open-source applications and services.Be advised that available distributions of these systems can contain, or offer to build and install, added software that is neither free software nor open-source.
Free and open-source software
There is often less certainty in FOSS projects gaining the required resources / participation for continued development than commercial software backed by companies. However companies also often abolish projects for being unprofitable and often large companies rely on and hence co-develop open source software.
Open-source software
Although the OSI definition of "open source software" is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as "source-available", or as "shared source", a term coined by Microsoft in 2001. While in 2007 two of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative licenses were certified by the OSI, most licenses from the SSI program are still "source-available only".
Free and open-source software
Early on, closed-source software was uncommon until the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when IBM implemented in 1983 an "object code only" policy, no longer distributing source code.
Linspire
Linspire has drawn some criticism from the free software community. This has included criticism for including proprietary software, with GNU founder Richard Stallman commenting: "No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master." In addition, following the initial Freespire announcement Pamela Jones of the Groklaw website published an article entitled "Freespire: A Linux Distro For When You Couldn't Care Less About Freedom;" that was highly critical of Linspire, Inc., and the Freespire project, for including closed-source components and advertising them as a favourable point—an action she classed as ignoring free and open-source software (FOSS) community values in a "community-driven" distribution, asserting that "Free Software isn't about proprietary drivers" and that "proprietary codecs, drivers and applications are not Open Source or open in any way." In response, Linspire, Inc. CEO Kevin Carmony stated via a journalist on the Linspire website that in ten years of holding out, the FOSS community has made relatively few gains, that many users are already using proprietary software and, although some would hold out, most would prefer to have something that works rather than nothing. He also asserted that the company believed in open source software, but also in the freedom of individuals to choose whatever software they want.
History of free and open-source software
To increase revenues, a general trend began to no longer distribute source code (easily readable by programmers,) and only distribute the executable machine code that was compiled from the source code. One person especially distressed by this new practice was Richard Stallman. He was concerned that he could no longer study or further modify programs initially written by others. Stallman viewed this practice as ethically wrong. In response, he founded the GNU Project in 1983 so that people could use computers using only free software. He established a non-profit organization, the Free Software Foundation, in 1985, to more formally organize the project. He invented copyleft, a legal mechanism to preserve the “free” status of a work subject to copyright, and implemented this in the General Public License. Copyleft licenses allow authors to grant a number of rights to users (including rights to use a work without further charges, and rights to obtain, study and modify the program's complete corresponding source code) but requires derivatives to remain under the same license or one without any additional restrictions. Since derivatives include combinations with other original programs, downstream authors are prevented from turning the initial work into proprietary software, and invited to contribute to the copyleft commons. Later, variations of such licenses were developed by others.
Freeware
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defines "open source software" (i.e., free software or free and open-source software), as distinct from "freeware" or "shareware"; it is software where "the Government does not have access to the original source code". The "free" in "freeware" refers to the price of the software, which is typically proprietary and distributed without source code. By contrast, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedoms granted users under the software license (for example, to run the program for any purpose, modify and redistribute the program to others), and such software may be sold at a price.
Software categories
Free software is software that comes with permission for anyone to use, copy and distribute, either verbatim or with modifications, either gratis or for a fee. In particular, this means that source code must be available. "If it's not source, it's not software." If a program is free, then it can potentially be included in a free operating system such as GNU, or free versions of the Linux system.
Open-source hardware
One of the major differences between developing open-source software and developing open-source hardware is that hardware results in tangible outputs, which cost money to prototype and manufacture. As a result, the phrase "free as in speech, not as in beer", more formally known as Gratis versus Libre, distinguishes between the idea of zero cost and the freedom to use and modify information. While open-source hardware faces challenges in minimizing cost and reducing financial risks for individual project developers, some community members have proposed models to address these needs Given this, there are initiatives to develop sustainable community funding mechanisms, such as the Open Source Hardware Central Bank.
Motif (software)
A version called Open Motif (substantially the same codebase under a different license) was released on May 15, 2000, under a license which allowed royalty-free distribution of Open Motif if the platform upon which it is used was open sourcebut was not an open source license itself. The name was criticized by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation for likelihood to mislead people into thinking it was proper open source or free software, particularly for the Open Group's statement that they had "released the source code of Motif to the Open Source community". The initial release of Open Motif was version 2.1.30 in May 2000; Open Motif 2.3 was released in June 2007, followed by a 2.3.1 bug fix release in September 2008 and a 2.3.2 bug fix release in March 2009.
David A. Wheeler
In 2000, Wheeler self-published ""Why Open Source Software / Free Software? Look at the Numbers!"", a text where he argued that considering free and open-source software (FOSS) is justified. According to Google Scholar, this article has been cited over 400 times in other scholarly works and in the 2004 report of the California Performance Review. Wheeler was interviewed about his webpage by Linux.com.
Open-source model
The term "open source" was first proposed by a group of people in the free software movement who were critical of the political agenda and moral philosophy implied in the term "free software" and sought to reframe the discourse to reflect a more commercially minded position. In addition, the ambiguity of the term "free software" was seen as discouraging business adoption.
The group included Christine Peterson, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann and Eric S. Raymond. Peterson suggested "open source" at a meeting held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's announcement in January 1998 of a source code release for Navigator. Linus Torvalds gave his support the following day, and Phil Hughes backed the term in "Linux Journal". Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement, initially seemed to adopt the term, but later changed his mind. Netscape released its source code under the Netscape Public License and later under the Mozilla Public License.
Software categories
Software categories are groups of software. They allow software to be understood in terms of those categories instead of the particularities of each package. Different classification schemes consider different aspects of software.
Computer software can be put into categories based on common function, type, or field of use. There are three broad classifications:The GNU Project categorizes software by copyright status: free software, open source software, public domain software, copylefted software, noncopylefted free software, lax permissive licensed software, GPL-covered software, the GNU operating system, GNU programs, GNU software, FSF-copyrighted GNU software, nonfree software, proprietary software, freeware, shareware, private software and commercial software.
Free software
Although both definitions refer to almost equivalent corpora of programs, the Free Software Foundation recommends using the term "free software" rather than "open-source software" (a younger vision coined in 1998), because the goals and messaging are quite dissimilar. "Open source" and its associated campaign mostly focus on the technicalities of the public development model and marketing free software to businesses, while taking the ethical issue of user rights very lightly or even antagonistically. Stallman has also stated that considering the practical advantages of free software is like considering the practical advantages of not being handcuffed, in that it is not necessary for an individual to consider practical reasons in order to realize that being handcuffed is undesirable in itself.
OpenQuote
OpenQuote is open source with no charges to license its use. The software is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a license that has been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
Free and open-source software
FOSS is often free of charge although donations are often encouraged. This also allows users to better test and compare software.
Public-domain software
Around 2004 there was a debate whether public-domain software can be considered part of the FOSS ecosystem, as lawyer Lawrence Rosen argued in the essay "Why the public domain isn't a license" that software could not truly be given into public domain, a position that faced opposition by Daniel J. Bernstein and others. In 2012, the status was finally resolved when Rosen changed his mind and accepted the CC0 as open-source license, while admitting that contrary to previous claims copyright can be waived away, backed by a Ninth circuit's decision.
Open-source license
The Free Software Foundation has related but distinct criteria for evaluating whether or not a license qualifies software as free software. Most free software licenses are also considered open-source software licenses. In the same way, the Debian project has its own criteria, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, on which the Open Source Definition is based. In the interpretation of the FSF, open-source license criteria focus on the availability of the "source code" and the ability to modify and share it, while free software licenses focuses on the user's freedom to use the "program", to modify it, and to share it.
Free software
Free software played a significant part in the development of the Internet, the World Wide Web and the infrastructure of dot-com companies. Free software allows users to cooperate in enhancing and refining the programs they use; free software is a pure public good rather than a private good. Companies that contribute to free software increase commercial innovation.
Open-source software
Many advocates argue that open source software is inherently safer because any person can view, edit, and change code. A study of the Linux source code has 0.17 bugs per 1000 lines of code while proprietary software generally scores 20–30 bugs per 1000 lines.
Open-source video game
Open source games which are free software and contain exclusively free content conform to DFSG, free culture, and open content are called sometimes called "free games". Most free games are open-source, but not all open-source games are free software; some open-source games contain proprietary non-free content. Many Linux distributions require for inclusion that the game content is freely redistributable, freeware or commercial restriction clauses are prohibited.
Open-source software
Notable software packages, previously proprietary, which have been open sourced include:
Before changing the license of software, distributors usually audit the source code for third party licensed code which they would have to remove or obtain permission for its relicense. Backdoors and other malware should also be removed as they may easily be discovered after release of the code.
Open source
Open source is a term denoting that a product includes permission to use its source code, design documents, or content. It most commonly refers to the open-source model, in which open-source software or other products are released under an open-source license as part of the open-source-software movement. Use of the term originated with software, but has expanded beyond the software sector to cover other open content and forms of open collaboration.
Free software
In 2006, OpenBSD started the first campaign against the use of binary blobs in kernels. Blobs are usually freely distributable device drivers for hardware from vendors that do not reveal driver source code to users or developers. This restricts the users' freedom effectively to modify the software and distribute modified versions. Also, since the blobs are undocumented and may have bugs, they pose a security risk to any operating system whose kernel includes them. The proclaimed aim of the campaign against blobs is to collect hardware documentation that allows developers to write free software drivers for that hardware, ultimately enabling all free operating systems to become or remain blob-free.
Open-source video game
id Software, an early entrant into commercial Linux gaming, would also prove to be an early supporter of free gaming when John D. Carmack released the source code for "Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom", first under a custom license and then later the GPL. This was followed by the release of Quake engine, id Tech 2, id Tech 3 and most recently id Tech 4. This led not only to source ports that allowed the playing of the non-free games based on these engines (plus fan added enhancements) on free engines and systems, but also to new free games such as "Freedoom", "Nexuiz"/"Xonotic", "Tremulous", and "OpenArena". Freeware games, such as "", "Warsow", "World of Padman" and "Urban Terror", have also taken advantage of these free engines and sometimes have given code back to the community. id Tech 4 was released as free software, even amongst patent concerns from Creative Labs. Development and editing tools are also commonly released freely, such as GtkRadiant.
History of free and open-source software
In the 1950s and 1960s, computer operating software and compilers were delivered as a part of hardware purchases without separate fees. At the time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software providing the ability to fix bugs or add new functions. Universities were early adopters of computing technology. Many of the modifications developed by universities were openly shared, in keeping with the academic principles of sharing knowledge, and organizations sprung up to facilitate sharing. As large-scale operating systems matured, fewer organizations allowed modifications to the operating software, and eventually such operating systems were closed to modification. However, utilities and other added-function applications are still shared and new organizations have been formed to promote the sharing of software.
History of free and open-source software
The term was given a big boost at an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher Tim O'Reilly. Originally titled the "Freeware Summit" and later named the "Open Source Summit", the event brought together the leaders of many of the most important free and open-source projects, including Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, Brian Behlendorf, Eric Allman, Guido van Rossum, Michael Tiemann, Paul Vixie, Jamie Zawinski of Netscape, and Eric Raymond. At that meeting, the confusion caused by the name free software was brought up. Tiemann argued for "sourceware" as a new term, while Raymond argued for "open source". The assembled developers took a vote, and the winner was announced at a press conference that evening. Five days later, Raymond made the first public call to the free software community to adopt the new term. The Open Source Initiative was formed shortly thereafter. According to the OSI Richard Stallman initially flirted with the idea of adopting the open source term. But as the enormous success of the open source term buried Stallman's free software term and his message on social values and computer users' freedom, later Stallman and his FSF strongly objected the OSI's approach and terminology. Due to the rejection of Stallman of the term open-source software, the FOSS ecosystem is being divided in its terminology, see also Alternative terms for free software. For example, a 2002 FOSS developer survey revealed that 32.6% associate themselves with OSS, 48% with free software, and 19.4% in between or undecided. Stallman still maintained, however, that users of each term were allies in the fight against proprietary software.
Open source
Free and open-source software, (FOSS) or (FLOSS), is openly shared source code that is licensed without any restrictions on usage, modification, or distribution. Confusion persists about this completely unrestricted definition because the "Free", also known as "Libre", refers to the freedom or the product not the price, expense, cost, or charge For example, "being free to speak" is not the same as "free beer". Also, "free and open" should not to be confused with public ownership (state ownership), deprivatization (nationalization), anti-privatization (anti-corporate activism), or transparent behavior.
Open science is said to be the antithesis of the blind faith in Scientism, and has the potential to be a practical defense against proprietary (closed) pseudoscience.
Open-source model
Open-source hardware is hardware which initial specification, usually in a software format, is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the hardware and source code without paying royalties or fees. Open-source hardware evolves through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual hardware/software developers, hobbyists, as well as very large companies. Examples of open-source hardware initiatives are:
Software categories
Like shareware, freeware is software available for download and distribution without any initial payment. Freeware never has an associated fee. Things like minor program updates and small games are commonly distributed as freeware. Though freeware is cost free, it is copyrighted, so other people can't market the software as their own.
List of open-source video games
This is a selected list of free/libre and open-source (FOSS) video games. Open-source video games are games assembled from and are themselves open-source software, including public domain games with public domain source code. This list includes games in which the game engine is open-source but the game content (media and levels, for example) may be under a different license.
Free software license
The free-software share-alike licenses written by Richard Stallman in the mid-1980s pioneered a concept known as "copyleft". Ensuing copyleft provisions stated that when modified versions of free software are distributed, they must be distributed under the same terms as the original software. Hence they are referred to as "share and share alike" or ""quid pro quo"". This results in the new software being open source as well. Since copyleft ensures that later generations of the software grant the freedom to modify the code, this is "free software". Non-copyleft licenses do not ensure that later generations of the software will remain free.
Transparency (behavior)
In the computer software world, open source software concerns the creation of software, to which access to the underlying source code is freely available. This permits use, study, and modification without restriction.
Code Project Open License
The CPOL is strictly for source code that is gratis, but is not recognized as a free or open license by the Free Software Foundation due to the restrictions within the CPOL forbidding usage for illegal purposes and the restrictions on selling the code without coupling it to a larger application. The license is thus incompatible with the GNU General Public License and some other free software licenses, and inconsistent with the Open Source Definition, which requires that a license not discriminate against fields of endeavor. The Apache Software Foundation does not accept code under this license.
Comparison of open-source and closed-source software
Some of the largest well-known FOSS projects are either legacy code (e.g., FreeBSD or Apache) developed a long time ago independently of the free software movement, or by companies like Netscape (which open-sourced its code with the hope that they could compete better), or by companies like MySQL which use FOSS to lure customers for its more expensive licensed product. However, it is notable that most of these projects have seen major or even complete rewrites (in the case of the Mozilla and Apache 2 code, for example) and do not contain much of the original code.
Open-source model
The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.
A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery.
Open-source software
Under Perens' definition, "open source" is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on the use and modification of the code. It is an explicit "feature" of open source that it puts very few restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user, in order to enable the rapid evolution of the software.
Networked advocacy
The concept of free software is much older than the Free Software Movement or the free software community, it is generally distinguished from the more popular open source software by its philosophical definition. Free software is generally referred to as "free speech," not "free beer." Essentially, those who are in favor of free software are in favor of freely accessing, reading, modifying, and redistributing the software. In the 1970s and 80's, two versions of Unix were being distributed from AT&T and Berkley Software Distribution (BSD), and the model favored by AT&T tended to receive more downloads than the BSD model. Several commercial innovations occurred because of these developments, including Apple's macOS. This was indicative of a movement within commercial software development to earn more profit from their products. Many argue that in 1976, Bill Gates signaled the beginning of the software-for-pay business with his Open Letter to Hobbyists, which referred to those people tinkering with the Altair BASIC system, which he developed with Paul Allen, criminals and guilty of copyright infringement. In response, Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Movement to ensure that either Unix or the alternate which he developed, GNU, would be free for people to use and develop on their own. This does not mean, however, that revised versions of free software can not be obfuscated or used in commercially sold products.
Alternative terms for free software
When the term "free software" was adopted by Richard Stallman in 1983, it was still ambiguously used to describe several kinds of software. In February 1986 Richard Stallman formally defined "free software" with the publication of The Free Software Definition in the FSF's now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin as software which can be used, modified, and redistributed with little or no restriction, his four essential software freedoms. Richard Stallman's Free Software Definition, adopted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), defines free software as a matter of liberty, not price and is inspired by the previous public domain software ecosystem. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website, where it is published in many languages.
Open-source-software movement
The open-source-software movement is a movement that supports the use of open-source licenses for some or all software, a part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The open-source movement was started to spread the concept/idea of open-source software.
Programmers who support the open-source-movement philosophy contribute to the open-source community by voluntarily writing and exchanging programming code for software development. The term "open source" requires that no one can discriminate against a group in not sharing the edited code or hinder others from editing their already-edited work. This approach to software development allows anyone to obtain and modify open-source code. These modifications are distributed back to the developers within the open-source community of people who are working with the software. In this way, the identities of all individuals participating in code modification are disclosed and the transformation of the code is documented over time. This method makes it difficult to establish ownership of a particular bit of code but is in keeping with the open-source-movement philosophy. These goals promote the production of high-quality programs as well as working cooperatively with other similarly-minded people to improve open-source technology. This led to software such as MediaWiki, the software with which the Wikipedia website is built.
Open-source software
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was formed in February 1998 by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens. With at least 20 years of evidence from case histories of closed software development versus open development already provided by the Internet developer community, the OSI presented the "open source" case to commercial businesses, like Netscape. The OSI hoped that the use of the label "open source", a term suggested by Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute at the strategy session, would eliminate ambiguity, particularly for individuals who perceive "free software" as anti-commercial. They sought to bring a higher profile to the practical benefits of freely available source code, and they wanted to bring major software businesses and other high-tech industries into open source. Perens attempted to register "open source" as a service mark for the OSI, but that attempt was impractical by trademark standards. Meanwhile, due to the presentation of Raymond's paper to the upper management at Netscape—Raymond only discovered when he read the press release, and was called by Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale's PA later in the day—Netscape released its Navigator source code as open source, with favorable results.
Free software
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated in 2001 that "open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source." This misunderstanding is based on a requirement of copyleft licenses (like the GPL) that if one distributes modified versions of software, they must release the source and use the same license. This requirement does not extend to other software from the same developer. The claim of incompatibility between commercial companies and Free Software is also a misunderstanding. There are several large companies, e.g. Red Hat and IBM, which do substantial commercial business in the development of Free Software.
Comparison of open-source and closed-source software
The cost of making a copy of a software program is essentially zero, so per-use fees are perhaps unreasonable for open-source software. At one time, open-source software development was almost entirely volunteer-driven, and although this is true for many small projects, many alternative funding streams have been identified and employed for FOSS:Increasingly, FOSS is developed by commercial organizations. In 2004, Andrew Morton noted that 37,000 of the 38,000 recent patches in the Linux kernel were created by developers directly paid to develop the Linux kernel. Many projects, such as the X Window System and Apache, have had commercial development as a primary source of improvements since their inception. This trend has accelerated over time.
Free and open-source software
FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD) were released as Free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, was released under the Apache License 1.0.
Open-source-software movement
The label "open source" was created and adopted by a group of people in the free-software movement at a strategy session held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source-code release for Navigator. One of the reasons behind using the term was that "the [advantage] of using the term open source [is] that the business world usually tries to keep free technologies from being installed." Those people who adopted the term used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to free themselves of the ideological and confrontational connotations of the term "free software". Later in February 1998, Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond founded an organization called Open Source Initiative (OSI) "as an educational, advocacy, and stewardship organization at a cusp moment in the history of that culture."
Freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines "freeware" unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification, redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering without the author's permission are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software, which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models.
Open-source software
OSI uses "The Open Source Definition" to determine whether it considers a software license open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Perens. Perens did not base his writing on the "four freedoms" from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which were only widely available later.
Proprietary software
Some closed-source software is released by their owner at end-of-life as open-source or source available software, often to prevent the software from becoming unsupported and unavailable abandonware. 3D Realms and id Software are famous for the practice of releasing closed source software into the open source. Some of those kinds are free-of-charge downloads (freeware), some are still commercially sold (e.g. Arx Fatalis). More examples of formerly closed-source software in the List of commercial software with available source code and List of commercial video games with available source code.
Open source
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design. Open-source code is meant to be a collaborative effort, where programmers improve upon the source code and share the changes within the community. Code is released under the terms of a software license. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.
List of freeware
Freeware is software that is available for use at no monetary cost or for an optional fee, but usually (although not necessarily) closed source with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the aim to expand the marketshare of a "premium" product. Popular examples of closed-source freeware include Adobe Reader, Free Studio and Skype.
Open-source hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement . Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH (free and open-source hardware). The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, schematics, bills of material, PCB layout data, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.
Open-source software
The same principles that underlie open source software can be found in many other ventures, such as open-source hardware, Wikipedia, and open-access publishing. Collectively, these principles are known as open source, open content, and open collaboration: "any system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants, who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which they make available to contributors and non-contributors alike."
List of proprietary source-available software
This is a list of proprietary source-available software, which has available source code, but is not classified as free software or open-source software. In some cases, this type of software is originally sold and released without the source code, and the source code becomes available later. Sometimes, the source code is released under a liberal software license at its end of life as abandonware. This type of software can also have its source code leaked or reverse engineered.
Source code
Generally speaking, software is "open source" if the source code is free to use, distribute, modify and study, and "proprietary" if the source code is kept secret, or is privately owned and restricted. One of the first software licenses to be published and to explicitly grant these freedoms was the GNU General Public License in 1989; the BSD license is another early example from 1990.
Open source
The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration, meaning "any system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which they make available to contributors and noncontributors alike." A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery.
Open-source software
Open Source Software Institute is a membership-based, non-profit (501 (c)(6)) organization established in 2001 that promotes the development and implementation of open source software solutions within US Federal, state and local government agencies. OSSI's efforts have focused on promoting adoption of open source software programs and policies within Federal Government and Defense and Homeland Security communities.
The Open Source Definition
The open source movement's definition of open source software by the Open Source Initiative and the official definitions of free software by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) basically refer to the same software licenses (with a few minor exceptions see Comparison of free and open-source software licenses), both definitions stand therefore for the same qualities and values. Despite that, FSF founder Richard Stallman stresses underlying philosophical differences when he comments:
Open Knowledge International (OKI) described in their Open Definition for open content, open data, and open licenses, "open/free" as synonymous in the definitions of open/free in the Open Source Definition, the FSF and the Definition of Free Cultural Works:
Software license
It was under debate some time if public domain software and public domain-like licenses can be considered as a kind of FOSS license. Around 2004 lawyer Lawrence Rosen argued in the essay ""Why the public domain isn't a license"" software could not truly be waived into public domain and can't therefore be interpreted as very permissive FOSS license, a position which faced opposition by Daniel J. Bernstein and others. In 2012 the dispute was finally resolved when Rosen accepted the CC0 as an open source license, while admitting that contrary to his previous claims, copyright can be waived away, backed by Ninth circuit decisions.
Open-source software
Developers have used the alternative terms "Free and Open Source Software" (FOSS), or "Free/Libre and Open Source Software" (FLOSS), consequently, to describe open source software that is also free software. While the definition of open source software is very similar to the FSF's free software definition it was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens with input from Eric S. Raymond and others.
Alternative terms for free software
On the end of 1990s the term "open source" gained much traction in public media and acceptance in software industry in context of the dotcom bubble and the open-source software driven Web 2.0. For instance, Duke University scholar Christopher M. Kelty described the Free Software movement prior to 1998 as fragmented and ""the term Open Source, by contrast, sought to encompass them all in one movement"". The term "open source" gained brought spread as open source movement which inspired many successor movements like the Open content, Open-source hardware, Open Knowledge movements. Under the impression of the success of "Open source" several journalists reported around 2000 the earlier "Free software" term and movement and its leader Stallman as being "forgotten". In response, Stallman and his FSF objected to the term "open source software" and fought since then for the term "free software". Due to the rejection of the FSF and its leader Richard Stallman of the term open source software, the ecosystem is being divided in its terminology. For example, a 2002 European Union FOSS developer survey revealed that 32.6% of them associate themselves with OSS, 48% with free software, and only 19.4% are undecided or in between. As both terms "free software" and "open-source software" have their fans and critics in the FOSS ecosystems, also unifying terms have been proposed; these include "software libre" (or libre software), "FLOSS" (free/libre and open-source software), and "FOSS" (or F/OSS, free and open-source software).
Free Software Directory
FSD has been used as a source for assessing the share of free software, for example finding in September 2002 an amount of "1550 entries, of which 1363 (87.9%) used the GPL license, 103 (6.6%) used the LGPL license, 32 (2.0%) used a BSD or BSD-like license, 29 (1.9%) used the Artistic license, 5 (0.3%) used the MIT license". By September 2009, the Directory listed 6,000 packages whose number grew up to 6,500 in October 2011, when the newly updated directory was launched. All listed packages are "free for any computer user to download, run and share. Each entry is individually checked and tested [...] so users know that any program they come across in the directory will be truly free software [...] with free documentation and without proprietary software requirements".
Comparison of free and open-source software licenses
The FSF's Free Software definition focuses on the user's unrestricted rights to use a "program", to study and modify it, to copy it, and redistribute it for any purpose, which are considered by the FSF the "four essential freedoms".The OSI's open-source criteria focuses on the availability of the "source code" and the advantages of an unrestricted and community driven development model.Yet, many FOSS licenses, like the Apache license, and all Free Software licenses allow commercial use of FOSS components.
Free software license
Existing free-software BSD-licensed projects tend to avoid including software licensed under the GPL in the core operating system, or the "base system", except as a last resort when alternatives are non-existent or vastly less capable, such as with GCC. For example, starting with FreeBSD10.0, the GCC was replaced by the Clang/LLVM compiler, The OpenBSD project has acted to remove GPL-licensed tools in favor of BSD-licensed alternatives, some newly written and some adapted from older code.
Alternative terms for free software
The first known use of the phrase "free open-source software" (in short FOSS or seldom F/OSS) on Usenet was in a posting on March 18, 1998, just a month after the term "open source" itself was coined.
In February 2002, F/OSS appeared on a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to Amiga computer games. In early 2002, MITRE used the term FOSS in what would later be their 2003 report "Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense." The European Union's institutions later also used the FOSS term while before using FLOSS, as also scholar in publications.
List of free geology software
Notice that 'free and open-source' requires that the source code is available. Simple being 'free of charge' is not sufficient—see gratis versus libre.
Free software
Thus, free software means that computer users have the freedom to cooperate with whom they choose, and to control the software they use. To summarize this into a remark distinguishing "libre" (freedom) software from "gratis" (zero price) software, the Free Software Foundation says: "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer. See "Gratis" versus "libre".
Software license
Two common categories for software under copyright law, and therefore with licenses which grant the licensee specific rights, are proprietary software and free and open-source software (FOSS). The distinct conceptual difference between the two is the granting of rights to modify and re-use a software product obtained by a customer: FOSS software licenses both rights to the customer and therefore bundles the modifiable source code with the software ("open-source"), while proprietary software typically does not license these rights and therefore keeps the source code hidden ("closed source").
Outline of free software
Free software – software which can be run, studied, examined, modified, and redistributed freely (without any cost). This type of software, which was given its name in 1983, has also come to be known as "open-source software", "software libre", "FOSS", and "FLOSS". The term "Free" refers to it being unfettered, rather than being free of charge.Free and open-source software packages (by type)
Open-source software development
Open-source software
Examples of free software license / open-source licenses include Apache License, BSD license, GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, MIT License, Eclipse Public License and Mozilla Public License.
Tim O'Reilly
In 1998, O'Reilly helped rebrand free software under the term open source. O'Reilly sees the role of open source as being inseparable from the development of the Internet, pointing to the widely used TCP/IP protocol, sendmail, Apache, Perl, Linux and other open source platforms. He is concerned about trends towards new forms of lock-in.
Open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. According to scientists who have studied it, open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration. The term is often written without a hyphen as "open source software".
Open-source software
The Free Software Foundation (FSF), started in 1985, intended the word "free" to mean "freedom to distribute" (or "free as in free speech") and not "freedom from cost" (or "free as in free beer"). Since a great deal of free software already was (and still is) free of charge, such free software became associated with zero cost, which seemed anti-commercial.
Free software movement
Although commercial free software was not uncommon at the time (see Cygnus Solutions for example), in 1998 after an announcement that Netscape would liberate their popular Web browser, a strategy session was held to develop a stronger business case for free software which would focus on technology rather than politics. After this, Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to promote the term "open source software" as an alternative term for free software. OSI wanted to address the perceived shortcomings in ambiguous "free software" term, and some members of OSI in addition didn't follow the free software movement's focus on non-free software as a social and ethical problem; but instead focused on the advantages of open source as superior model for software development.
The latter became the view of people like Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds, while Bruce Perens argues that open source was simply meant to popularize free software under a new brand, and even called for a return to the basic ethical principles.
Open-source software development
Open-source software development is the process by which open-source software, or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project. These are software products available with its source code under an open-source license to study, change, and improve its design. Examples of some popular open-source software products are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, Android, LibreOffice and the VLC media player. Open-source software development has been a large part of the creation of the World Wide Web as we know it, with Tim Berners-Lee contributing his HTML code development as the original platform upon which the internet is now built.
Free software
The FSF list is not prescriptive: free-software licenses can exist that the FSF has not heard about, or considered important enough to write about. So it's possible for a license to be free and not in the FSF list. The OSI list only lists licenses that have been submitted, considered and approved. All open-source licenses must meet the Open Source Definition in order to be officially recognized as open source software. Free software, on the other hand, is a more informal classification that does not rely on official recognition. Nevertheless, software licensed under licenses that do not meet the Free Software Definition cannot rightly be considered free software.
Business models for open-source software
Much of the Internet runs on open-source software tools and utilities such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, known as the LAMP stack for web servers. Using open source appeals to software developers for three main reasons: low or no cost, access to source code they can tailor themselves, and a shared community that ensures a generally robust code base, with quick fixes for new issues.
Open-source software
According to the Free software movement's leader, Richard Stallman, the main difference is that by choosing one term over the other (i.e. either "open source" or "free software") one lets others know about what one's goals are: "Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement." Nevertheless, there is significant overlap between open source software and free software.
Open source
The simple English phrase "open source" has sporadically occurred in books dating back hundreds of years. For example, in 1685, Thomas Willis wrote in "The London Practice of Physick, Or The Whole Practical Part of Physick" that fluid from a wound "flow'd forth in a plentifull Stream as from an open Source, till it was drawn from the whole Legg..." However, the modern meaning of the term "open source" was first proposed by a group of people in the free software movement who were critical of the political agenda and moral philosophy implied in the term "free software" and sought to reframe the discourse to reflect a more commercially minded position. In addition, the ambiguity of the term "free software" was seen as discouraging business adoption.
The group included Christine Peterson, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann and Eric S. Raymond. Peterson suggested "open source" at a meeting held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's announcement in January 1998 of a source code release for Navigator. Linus Torvalds gave his support the following day, and Phil Hughes backed the term in "Linux Journal". Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement, initially seemed to adopt the term, but later changed his mind. Netscape released its source code under the Netscape Public License and later under the Mozilla Public License.
Open Source Judaism
Prior to the coinage and adoption of the term "Open Source" in 1998, several Jewish computer scientists, typographers, and linguists developed free software of interest to Jews, students of Judaism, and readers of Hebrew. "Free software" (not to be confused with freeware) is software shared under a free license (such as the GPL), where the definition of "free" is maintained by freedomdefined.org.
Free software
The Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative both publish lists of licenses that they find to comply with their own definitions of free software and open-source software respectively:
Business models for open-source software
Open-source software is widely used both as independent applications and as components in non-open-source applications. Customers may be willing to use open technology under standard commercial terms and thereby pay for open-source software when additional value is created. This can be the case for legal protection (e.g., indemnification from copyright or patent infringement), "commercial-grade QA", and professional support/training/consulting that are typical of commercial software, while also receiving the benefits of fine-grained control and lack of lock-in that comes with open-source. Open-source software is used as components inside of proprietary, for-profit products and services by many independent software vendors (ISVs), value-added resellers (VARs), and hardware vendors (OEMs or ODMs) in frameworks, modules, and libraries.
Free software
It is rare that a license announced as being in-compliance with the FSF guidelines does not also meet the Open Source Definition, although the reverse is not necessarily true (for example, the NASA Open Source Agreement is an OSI-approved license, but non-free according to FSF).
Open-source software
Not all OSS initiatives have been successful, for example SourceXchange and Eazel. Software experts and researchers who are not convinced by open source's ability to produce quality systems identify the unclear process, the late defect discovery and the lack of any empirical evidence as the most important problems (collected data concerning productivity and quality). It is also difficult to design a commercially sound business model around the open source paradigm. Consequently, only technical requirements may be satisfied and not the ones of the market. In terms of security, open source may allow hackers to know about the weaknesses or loopholes of the software more easily than closed-source software. It depends on control mechanisms in order to create effective performance of autonomous agents who participate in virtual organizations.
Types of e-commerce
Open source e-Commerce is a free of charge platform that doesn’t imply licenses fee. Furthermore, open source users are also responsible for installing, maintaining, securing and configuring the software on their own servers. In order to set up an open source platform, basic technical expertise is required in the areas of web design and development. Software products that are distributed as open source are generally free, and users can access and modify the source code.
Networked advocacy
Wikipedia, otherwise known as the free encyclopedia, is free because it follows the mantra of free software as defined by Richard Stallman. Collaborations such as Wikipedia, the free software movement, and open source software are successful in that they take advantage of small contributions by many people and that the cost of failure is low. The model of free or open source software may be one of the older forms of electronically enabled networks, but its format has remained relatively unchanged since the early 1990s. Networked advocacy in free and open source software movements is specifically designed to maintain an open flow of communication and development alive between those interested in various software projects. They take advantage of the soft ties between people of common interests and varying levels of skill to come together to create software which is at times effective and cheap enough to be a better choice for governments and business than commercially developed software products.
History of free and open-source software
In the 1950s and into the 1960s almost all software was produced by academics and corporate researchers working in collaboration, often shared as public-domain software. As such, it was generally distributed under the principles of openness and co-operation long established in the fields of academia, and was not seen as a commodity in itself. Such communal behavior later became a central element of the so-called hacking culture (a term with a positive connotation among open-source programmers). At this time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software machine code because users frequently modified the software themselves, because it would not run on different hardware or OS without modification, and also to fix bugs or add new functions. The first example of free and open-source software is believed to be the A-2 system, developed at the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand in 1953, which was released to customers with its source code. They were invited to send their improvements back to UNIVAC. Later, almost all IBM mainframe software was also distributed with source code included. User groups such as that of the IBM 701, called SHARE, and that of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), called DECUS were formed to facilitate the exchange of software. The SHARE Operating System, originally developed by General Motors, was distributed by SHARE for the IBM 709 and 7090 computers. Some university computer labs did even have a policy requiring that all programs installed on the computer had to come with published source-code files.
Shared Source Initiative
This is a version of the Microsoft Public License in which rights are only granted to developers of Microsoft Windows-based software. This license is not open source, as defined by the OSI, because the restriction limiting use of the software to Windows violates the stipulation that open-source licenses must be technology-neutral. It is also considered to be non-free by the Free Software Foundation due to this restriction.
Free and open-source software
According to Yochai Benkler, Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, free software is the most visible part of a new economy of commons-based peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. As examples, he cites a variety of FOSS projects, including both free software and open-source.
Free software
From the 1950s up until the early 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the "software freedoms" associated with free software, which was typically public-domain software. Software was commonly shared by individuals who used computers and by hardware manufacturers who welcomed the fact that people were making software that made their hardware useful. Organizations of users and suppliers, for example, SHARE, were formed to facilitate exchange of software. As software was often written in an interpreted language such as BASIC, the source code was distributed to use these programs. Software was also shared and distributed as printed source code (Type-in program) in computer magazines (like Creative Computing, SoftSide, Compute!, Byte etc) and books, like the bestseller "BASIC Computer Games". By the early 1970s, the picture changed: software costs were dramatically increasing, a growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products (free in that the cost was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of "free" software bundled with hardware product costs. In "United States vs. IBM", filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anti-competitive. While some software might always be free, there would henceforth be a growing amount of software produced primarily for sale. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the software industry began using technical measures (such as only distributing binary copies of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to study or adapt the software applications as they saw fit. In 1980, copyright law was extended to computer programs.
Campus Party
Free software is rooted in the origins of Campus Party. They believe that free and open source software is a "new way of writing the rules of digital society" and demonstrates a "profound change in the relationship between the industry, software creators and all who participate in the construction of a world where knowledge knows no boundaries." Some of the most popular events at the Campus are Linux and Ubuntu download fests where free software advocates can recruit new converts.
Executive Director of Linux International, Jon "Maddog" Hall has spoken at the event four times, most recently in Brazil in 2011 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Linux. In 2009 he created the multimedia "maddog challenge," a video contest sponsored by Telefónica to raise the awareness of free software and Creative Commons licenses.
Business models for open-source software
Another approach to funding is to provide the software freely, but sell licenses to proprietary add-ons such as data libraries. For instance, an open-source CAD program may require parts libraries which are sold on a subscription or flat-fee basis. Open-source software can also promote the sale of specialized hardware that it interoperates with, some example cases being the Asterisk telephony software developed by PC-telephony hardware manufacturer Digium and the Robot Operating System (ROS) robotics platform by Willow Garage and Stanford AI Labs. Many open source software projects have begun as research projects within universities, as personal projects of students or professors, or as tools to aid scientific research. The influence of universities and research institutions on open-source shows in the number of projects named after their host institutions, such as BSD Unix, CMU Common Lisp, or the NCSA HTTPd which evolved into Apache.
Open-source software
The free-software movement was launched in 1983. In 1998, a group of individuals advocated that the term free software should be replaced by open-source software (OSS) as an expression which is less ambiguous and more comfortable for the corporate world. Software developers may want to publish their software with an open-source license, so that anybody may also develop the same software or understand its internal functioning. With open-source software, generally anyone is allowed to create modifications of it, port it to new operating systems and instruction set architectures, share it with others or, in some cases, market it. Scholars Casson and Ryan have pointed out several policy-based reasons for adoption of open source – in particular, the heightened value proposition from open source (when compared to most proprietary formats) in the following categories:
Open-source license
An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial companies to review and modify the source code, blueprint or design for their own customization, curiosity or troubleshooting needs. Open-source licensed software is mostly available free of charge, though this does not necessarily have to be the case. Licenses which only permit non-commercial redistribution or modification of the source code for personal use only are generally not considered as open-source licenses. However, open-source licenses may have some restrictions, particularly regarding the expression of respect to the origin of software, such as a requirement to preserve the name of the authors and a copyright statement within the code, or a requirement to redistribute the licensed software only under the same license (as in a copyleft license). One popular set of open-source software licenses are those approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) based on their Open Source Definition (OSD).
History of free and open-source software
Software was not considered copyrightable before the 1974 US Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) decided that "computer programs, to the extent that they embody an author's original creation, are proper subject matter of copyright." Therefore, software had no licenses attached and was shared as public-domain software, typically with source code. The CONTU decision plus later court decisions such as "Apple v. Franklin" in 1983 for object code, gave computer programs the copyright status of literary works and started the licensing of software and the shrink-wrap closed source software business model.
Free software movement
On the other hand, the free software movement views free software as a moral imperative: that proprietary software should be rejected for selfish and social reasons, and that only free software should be developed and taught to cope with the task of making computing technology beneficial to humanity. It is argued that whatever economical or technical merits free software may have, those are byproducts stemming from the rights that free software developers and users must enjoy. An example of this would be the unlikelihood of free software being designed to mistreat or spy on users. At the same time, the benefits purveyed by the open-source movement have been challenged both from inside and outside the free software movement. It is unclear whether free and open-source software actually leads to more performant and less vulnerable code, with researchers Robert Glass and Benjamin Mako Hill providing statistical insight that this is usually not the case.
Free software movement
While some people prefer to link the two ideas of "open-source software" and "free software" together, they offer two separate ideas and values. This ambiguity began in 1998 when people started to use the term "open-source software" rather than "free software". People in the community of free software used these separate terms as a way to differentiate what they did. Richard Stallman has called open source ""a non-movement"", because it ""does not campaign for anything"". Open source addresses software being open as a practical question as opposed to an ethical dilemma. In other words, it focuses more on the development. The open-source movement ultimately determines that non-free software is not the solution of best interest but nonetheless a solution.
Open-source license
Source-available licenses ensure source code availability, but do not necessarily meet the user freedom criteria to be classified as free software or open-source software.
Open-source license
Around 2004 lawyer Lawrence Rosen argued in the essay ""Why the public domain isn't a license"" software could not truly be waived into the public domain and can't therefore be interpreted as very permissive open-source license, a position which faced opposition by Daniel J. Bernstein and others. In 2012 the dispute was finally resolved when Rosen accepted the CC0 as an open-source license, while admitting that contrary to his previous claims copyright can be waived away, backed by Ninth Circuit decisions.
CaBIG
Since 2004, the caBIG program used open-source communities, adapted from other public-private partnerships. The caBIG program produced software under contract to software development teams largely within the commercial research community.
In general, software developed under US government contracts is the property of the US government and the US taxpayers. Depending on the terms in specific contracts, they might be accessible only by request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The timeliness of response to such requests might preclude a requester from ever gaining any secondary value from software released under a FOIA request. 
The caBIG program placed the all caBIG software in a software repository freely accessible for download. Open source means anyone can modify the downloaded software; however, the licensing applied to the downloaded software allows greater flexibility than is typical. An individual or enterprise is allowed to contribute the modified code back to the caBIG program but is not required to do so. Likewise, the modifications can be made available as open source but are not required to be made available as open source. The caBIG licensing even allows the use of the caBIG applications and components, combined with additions and modifications, to be released as commercial products. These aspects of the caBIG program actually encourage commercialization of caBIG technology.
Business models for open-source software
Much unlike proprietary off-the-shelf software that come with restrictive licenses, open-source software is distributed freely, through the web and in physical media. Because creators cannot require each user to pay a license fee to fund development this way, a number of alternative development funding models have emerged.