open software licensed to ensure source code usage rights for a broader coverage of this topic see opensource software movement opensource software shares similarities with free software and is now part of the broader term free and opensource software a screenshot of linux mint running the xfce desktop environment mozilla firefox browsing wikipedia powered by mediawiki a calculator program the built in calendar vim gimp and the vlc media player all of which are opensource software opensource 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 opensource software development or collaborative development between multiple independent contributors generates an increasingly more diverse scope of design perspective than any company is capable of developing and sustaining long term history further information history of free and opensource software end of 1990s foundation of the open source initiative in the early days of computing programmers and developers shared software in order to learn from each other and evolve the field of computing eventually the opensource notion moved to the way side of commercialization of software in the years 19701980 however academics still often developed software collaboratively for example donald knuth in 1979 with the tex typesetting system or richard stallman in 1983 with the gnu operating system in 1997 eric raymond published the cathedral and the bazaar a reflective analysis of the hacker community and freesoftware principles the paper received significant attention in early 1998 and was one factor in motivating netscape communications corporation to release their popular netscape communicator internet suite as free software this source code subsequently became the basis behind seamonkey mozilla firefox thunderbird and kompozer netscapes act prompted raymond and others to look into how to bring the free software foundations free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry they concluded that fsfs social activism was not appealing to companies like netscape and looked for a way to rebrand the free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code while the open source initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by the concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an applications source code a microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that open source is an intellectual property destroyer i cant imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectualproperty business the freesoftware movement was launched in 1983 in 1998 a group of individuals advocated that the term free software should be replaced by opensource software oss as an expression which is less ambiguous software developers may want to publish their software with an opensource license so that anybody may also develop the same software or understand its internal functioning with opensource 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 policybased 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 security affordability transparency perpetuity interoperability flexibility localization particularly in the context of local governments who make software decisions casson and ryan argue that governments have an inherent responsibility and fiduciary duty to taxpayers which includes the careful analysis of these factors when deciding to purchase proprietary software or implement an opensource option the open source definition presents an opensource philosophy and further defines the terms of use modification and redistribution of opensource software software licenses grant rights to users which would otherwise be reserved by copyright law to the copyright holder several opensource software licenses have qualified within the boundaries of the open source definition the most prominent and popular example is the gnu general public license gpl which allows free distribution under the condition that further developments and applications are put under the same licence thus also free the open source label came out of a strategy session held on april 7 1998 in palo alto in reaction to netscapes january 1998 announcement of a source code release for navigator as mozilla a group of individuals at the session included tim oreilly linus torvalds tom paquin jamie zawinski larry wall brian behlendorf sameer parekh eric allman greg olson paul vixie john ousterhout guido van rossum philip zimmermann john gilmore and eric s raymond they used the opportunity before the release of navigators source code to clarify a potential confusion caused by the ambiguity of the word free in english many people claimed that the birth of the internet since 1969 started the opensource movement while others do not distinguish between opensource and free software movements 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 anticommercial 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 anticommercial 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 hightech 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 raymonds paper to the upper management at netscaperaymond only discovered when he read the press release definitions the logo of the open source initiative the open source initiatives osi definition is recognized by several governments internationally 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 under perens definition open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or nonexistent 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 despite initially accepting it opensource software licensing opensource license further information free software license see also free and opensource software licensing and software license when an author contributes code to an opensource project eg apacheorg they do so under an explicit license eg the apache contributor license agreement or an implicit license eg the opensource license under which the project is already licensing code some opensource projects do not take contributed code under a license but actually require joint assignment of the authors copyright in order to accept code contributions into the project examples of free software license opensource licenses include apache license bsd license gnu general public license gnu lesser general public license mit license eclipse public license and mozilla public license the proliferation of opensource licenses is a negative aspect of the opensource movement because it is often difficult to understand the legal implications of the differences between licenses with more than 180000 opensource projects available and more than 1400 unique licenses the complexity of deciding how to manage opensource use within closedsource commercial enterprises has dramatically increased some are homegrown while others are modeled after mainstream foss licenses such as berkeley software distribution bsd apache mitstyle massachusetts institute of technology or gnu general public license gpl in view of this opensource practitioners are starting to use classification schemes in which foss licenses are grouped typically based on the existence and obligations imposed by the copyleft provision the strength of the copyleft provision an important legal milestone for the open source free software movement was passed in 2008 when the us federal appeals court ruled that free software licenses definitely do set legally binding conditions on the use of copyrighted work and they are therefore enforceable under existing copyright law as a result if endusers violate the licensing conditions their license disappears meaning they are infringing copyright despite this licensing risk most commercial software vendors are using open source software in commercial products while fulfilling the license terms eg leveraging the apache license certifications certification can help to build user confidence certification could be applied to the simplest component to a whole software system the united nations university international institute for software technology opensource software development opensource software development model development model in his 1997 essay the cathedral and the bazaar in the traditional model of development which he called the cathedral model development takes place in a centralized way roles are clearly defined roles include people dedicated to designing the architects people responsible for managing the project and people responsible for implementation traditional software engineering follows the cathedral model the bazaar model however is different in this model roles are not clearly defined gregorio robles suggests that software developed using the bazaar model should exhibit the following patterns users should be treated as codevelopers the users are treated like codevelopers and so they should have access to the source code of the software furthermore users are encouraged to submit additions to the software code fixes for the software bug reports documentation etc having more codevelopers increases the rate at which the software evolves linuss law states given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow this means that if many users view the source code they will eventually find all bugs and suggest how to fix them note that some users have advanced programming skills and furthermore each users machine provides an additional testing environment this new testing environment offers that ability to find and fix a new bug early releases the first version of the software should be released as early as possible so as to increase ones chances of finding codevelopers early frequent integration code changes should be integrated merged into a shared code base as often as possible so as to avoid the overhead of fixing a large number of bugs at the end of the project life cycle some open source projects have nightly builds where integration is done automatically on a daily basis several versions there should be at least two versions of the software there should be a buggier version with more features and a more stable version with fewer features the buggy version also called the development version is for users who want the immediate use of the latest features and are willing to accept the risk of using code that is not yet thoroughly tested the users can then act as codevelopers reporting bugs and providing bug fixes high modularization the general structure of the software should be modular allowing for parallel development on independent components dynamic decision making structure there is a need for a decision making structure whether formal or informal that makes strategic decisions depending on changing user requirements and other factors compare with extreme programming data suggests however that oss is not quite as democratic as the bazaar model suggests an analysis of five billion bytes of freeopen source code by 31999 developers shows that 74 of the code was written by the most active 10 of authors the average number of authors involved in a project was 51 with the median at 2 advantages and disadvantages open source software is usually easier to obtain than proprietary software often resulting in increased use additionally the availability of an open source implementation of a standard can increase adoption of that standard moreover lower costs of marketing and logistical services are needed for oss oss also helps companies keep abreast of technology developments it is a good tool to promote a companys image including its commercial products open source development offers the potential for a more flexible technology and quicker innovation it is said to be more reliable since it typically has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software open source is not dependent on the company or author that originally created it even if the company fails the code continues to exist and be developed by its users also it uses open standards accessible to everyone thus it does not have the problem of incompatible formats that exist in proprietary software it is flexible because modular systems allow programmers to build custom interfaces or add new abilities to it and it is innovative since open source programs are the product of collaboration among a large number of different programmers the mix of divergent perspectives corporate objectives and personal goals speeds up innovation moreover free software can be developed in accord with purely technical requirements it does not require thinking about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of the software commercial pressures make traditional software developers pay more attention to customers requirements than to security requirements since such features are somewhat invisible to the customer it is sometimes said that the open source development process may not be well defined and the stages in the development process such as system testing and documentation may be ignored however this is only true for small mostly single programmer projects larger successful projects do define and enforce at least some rules as they need them to make the teamwork possible not all oss initiatives have been successful for example sourcexchange and eazel development tools in oss development tools are used to support the development of the product and the development process itself revision control systems such as concurrent versions system cvs and later subversion svn and git are examples of tools often themselves open source help manage the source code files and the changes to those files for a software project open source projects are often loosely organized with little formalised process modelling or support but utilities such as issue trackers are often used to organize open source software development tools such as mailing lists and irc provide means of coordination among developers organizations some of the more prominent organizations involved in oss development include the apache software foundation creators of the apache web server the linux foundation a nonprofit which as of 2012 open source software institute is a membershipbased nonprofit 501 c6 organization established in 2001 that promotes the development and implementation of open source software solutions within us federal state and local government agencies ossis efforts have focused on promoting adoption of open source software programs and policies within federal government and defense and homeland security communities open source for america is a group created to raise awareness in the united states federal government about the benefits of open source software their stated goals are to encourage the governments use of open source software participation in open source software projects and incorporation of open source community dynamics to increase government transparency miloss is a group dedicated to the advancement of oss use and creation in the military funding business models for opensource software opensource software is widely used both as independent applications and as components in nonopensource applications many independent software vendors isvs valueadded resellers vars and hardware vendors oems or odms use opensource frameworks modules and libraries inside their proprietary forprofit products and services from a customers perspective the ability to use open technology under standard commercial terms and support is valuable they are willing to pay for the legal protection eg indemnification from copyright or patent infringement commercialgrade qa and professional supporttrainingconsulting that are typical of commercial software while also receiving the benefits of finegrained control and lack of lockin that comes with opensource comparisons with other software licensingdevelopment models closed source proprietary software comparison of opensource and closedsource software the debate over open source vs closed source alternatively called proprietary software is sometimes heated the top four reasons as provided by open source business conference survey individuals or organizations choose open source software are lower cost security no vendor lock in better quality since innovative companies no longer rely heavily on software sales proprietary software has become less of a necessity that 98 of enterpriselevel companies use open source software offerings in some capacity with this market shift more critical systems are beginning to rely on open source offerings proprietary source distributors have started to develop and contribute to the open source community due to the market share shift doing so by the need to reinvent their models in order to remain competitive many advocates argue that open source software is inherently safer because any person can view edit and change code free software alternative terms for free software see also comparison of free and opensource software licenses according to the free software movements leader richard stallman the main difference is that by choosing one term over the other ie either open source or free software one lets others know about what ones goals are open source is a development methodology free software is a social movement the fsf developers have used the alternative terms free and open source software foss or freelibre and open source software floss consequently to describe open source software that is also free software the term open source was originally intended to be trademarkable however the term was deemed too descriptive so no trademark exists osi certified is a trademark licensed only to people who are distributing software licensed under a license listed on the open source initiatives list opensource versus sourceavailable sourceavailable 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 sourceavailable or as shared source a term coined by microsoft in 2001 opensourcing opensourcing is the act of propagating the open source movement most often referring to releasing previously proprietary software under an open sourcefree software license but it may also refer programing open source software or installing open source software notable software packages previously proprietary which have been open sourced include netscape navigator the code of which became the basis of the mozilla and mozilla firefox web browsers staroffice which became the base of the openofficeorg office suite and libreoffice global file system was originally gpld then made proprietary in 2001 but in 2004 was regpld sap db which has become maxdb and is now distributed and owned by mysql ab interbase database which was open sourced by borland in 2000 and presently exists as a commercial product and an opensource fork firebird 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 current applications and adoption free and opensource software adoption see also linux adoption and free software adoption we migrated key functions from windows to linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable one that would give us inhouse control so if we needed to patch adjust or adapt we could official statement of the united space alliance which manages the computer systems for the international space station iss regarding why they chose to switch from windows to debian gnulinux on the iss widely used opensource software list of free and opensource software packages open source software projects are built and maintained by a network of volunteer programmers and are widely used in free as well as commercial products extensions for nonsoftware use open source model see also open content and open collaboration while the term open source applied originally only to the source code of software a movement to decentralize technologies so that any human can use them however it is often misapplied to other areas which have different and competing principles which overlap only partially the same principles that underlie open source software can be found in many other ventures such as opensource hardware wikipedia and openaccess publishing collectively these principles are known as open source open content and open collaboration this culture or ideology takes the view that the principles apply more generally to facilitate concurrent input of different agendas approaches and priorities in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial companies free and opensource software portal free software free software community free software movement list of open source software packages opencontent open source advocacy open source hardware open source initiative open source software institute open source software security open source video games all articles with titles containing open source proprietary software shared source timeline of open source software androutsellistheotokis stephanos spinellis diomidis kechagia maria gousios georgios 2010 open source software a survey from 10000 feet pdf foundations and trends in technology information and operations management 4 pp187347 doi1015610200000026 isbn9781601984845 coleman e gabriella coding freedom the ethics and aesthetics of hacking princeton up 2012 fadi p deek james a m mchugh 2008 open source technology and policy cambridge cambridge university press isbn9780511367755 chris dibona and sam ockman and mark stone ed 1999 open sources voices from the open source revolution oreilly isbn9781565925823 joshua gay ed 2002 free software free society selected essays of richard m stallman pdf boston gnu press free software foundation isbn9781882114986 understanding foss editor sampathkumar coimbatore india benkler yochai 2002 coases penguin or linux and the nature of the firm yale law journal 1123 dec 2002 p36778 in adobe pdf format v engelhardt sebastian 2008 the economic properties of software jena economic research papers volume 2 2008 number 2008045 pdf lerner j tirole j 2002 some simple economics on open source journal of industrial economics 502 p 197234 vlimki mikko 2005 the rise of open source licensing a challenge to the use of intellectual property in the software industry pdf turre publishing archived from the original pdf on 4 march 2009 polley barry 20071211 open source discussion paper version 10 pdf new zealand ministry of justice retrieved 20071212 rossi m a 2006 decoding the freeopen source software puzzle a survey of theoretical and empirical contributions in j bitzer p schrder eds the economics of open source software development p 1555 open sources voices from the open source revolution an online book containing essays from prominent members of the open source community whence the source untangling the open sourcefree software debate essay on the differences between free software and open source by thomas scoville berry d m 2004 the contestation of code a preliminary investigation into the discourse of the free software and open software movement critical discourse studies volume 11 schrape janfelix 2017 open source projects as incubators of innovation from niche phenomenon to integral part of the software industry pdf stuttgart research contributions to organizational sociology and innovation studies 201703 sustainable open source a confluence article providing guidelines for fair participation in the open source ecosystem by radovan semancik wikimedia commons has media related to free software wikibooks has a book on the topic of open source wikibooks has a book on the topic of use the source scholia has a topic profile for opensource software the open source initiatives definition of open source free open source research community many online research papers about open source opensource software at curlie vtesoftware distributionlicenses beerware floating licensing free and opensource free open source freely redistributable proprietary public domain sourceavailable compensation models adware commercial software retail software crippleware crowdfunding freemium freeware pay what you want careware donationware opencore model postcardware shareware nagware delivery methods digital distribution file sharing onpremises preinstalled product bundling retail software sneakernet software as a service deceptive andor illicit unwanted software bundling malware spyware trojan horse worm ransomware scareware shovelware vaporware software release life cycle abandonware endoflife longterm support software maintenance software maintainer software publisher copy protection digital rights management software protection dongle hardware restrictions license manager product activation product key software copyright software patent torrent poisoning vtefree and opensource softwaregeneral alternative terms for free software comparison of opensource and closedsource software comparison of source code hosting facilities free software free software project directories gratis versus libre longterm support opensource software opensource software development outline softwarepackages audio bioinformatics codecs collaboration configuration management device drivers graphics wireless geophysics health mathematics operating systems programming languages routing statistics television video games web applications content management systems ecommerce word processors android apps ios apps commercial trademarked formerly proprietary community free software movement history opensource software movement organizations events licenses afl apache apsl artistic beerware boost bsd cc0 cddl epl free software foundation gnu gpl gnu lgpl isc mit mpl msplrl python python software foundation license sleepycat unlicense wtfpl zlib types and standards comparison of free and opensource software licenses contributor license agreement copyleft debian free software guidelines definition of free cultural works free license the free software definition the open source definition opensource license permissive software licence public domain viral license challenges binary blob digital rights management hardware restrictions license proliferation mozilla software rebranding proprietary software scolinux controversies secure boot software patents software security trusted computing related topics forking gnu manifesto microsoft open specification promise opencore model opensource hardware shared source initiative sourceavailable software the cathedral and the bazaar revolution os book category commons portal vteintellectual property activismissues artificial scarcity copyright infringement digital rights management gripe site legal aspects of file sharing mashup digital music videos monopolies of knowledge music piracy orphan works patents biological software software patent debate trolling public domain concepts all rights reversed alternative compensation system anticopyright notice business models for opensource software copyleft commercial use of copyleft works commonsbased peer production free content free software license libertarian positions open content opendesign movement open music model open patent opensource hardware opensource software prize system contests sharealike video on demand movements access to knowledge movement anticopyright cultural environmentalism freeculture movement free software movement organizationsprocopyright copyright alliance procopyleft creative commons electronic frontier foundation free software foundation open rights group organization for transformative works the pirate bay piratbyrn pirate party scihub students for free culture people alexandra elbakyan rick falkvinge lawrence lessig richard stallman peter sunde peter suber aaron swartz documentaries steal this film 2006 2007 good copy bad copy 2007 rip a remix manifesto 2008 tpb afk the pirate bay away from keyboard 2013 the internets own boy 2014 vtefreeculture and opensource movements concepts and practices key concepts commonsb ased peer production crowdsourcing gratis versus libre open collaboration openness participatory culture sharism social peertopeer processes research and science citizen science open science access notebook science research science data plan s data informationand knowledge free content knowledge commons open communication open knowledge content data communicationand learningmedia collaborative writing democratic media open publishing participatory media peer review education open education educational resources university admissions opendoor academic policy journalism citizen media citizen journalism and wiki journalism opensource journalism economy productionand developmentproducts free and opensource software foss freelibre software opensource software opendesign movement robotics open gaming opensource architecture opensource hardware economic principles gift economy open innovation open patent open standard sharing economy politics and governance open government opensource governance organizations creative commons free software foundation open architecture network openmod initiative open knowledge international open rights group open source initiative open web foundation p2p foundation pirate party plos sparc activists tim bernerslee alexandra elbakyan cody wilson lawrence lessig peter murrayrust douglas rushkoff richard stallman peter suber peter sunde aaron swartz john wilbanks projects andmovements diybio freeculture movement free software movement open science movement open source ecology opensource software movement opencores openwetware scihub tools licenses creative commons gpl definition docs free cultural works free software open open source open data indices open educational resources open music model open web movement vteindependent productionreading alternative comics alternative manga fanzine webcomic business webtoon minicomic coops djinshi conventions printers shops self publishing small press amateur press association audio independent music record label netlabel opensource label radio station pirate radio cassette culture djin music lofi music tracker mod music podsafe musical instruments circuit bending experimental musical instrument videoamateur home movies amateur film amateur pornography fan film machinima professional independent animation cinema of transgression independent film exploitation film guerrilla filmmaking b movie golden age 50s 60s70s 80spresent z movie midnight movie lowbudget film no budget film no wave cinema double feature software cowboy coding demoscene free software opensource software software cracking unofficial patch warez scene video games indie gamesdevelopmentdevelopers homebrew fangame djin soft mod opensource video game rom hack fooddrinks independent soft drink homebrewing microbrewery other indie art amateur photography mail art nave art outsider art visionary environment indie rpg independent circuit wrestling independent tv station general indie design do it yourself diy ethic djin make magazine maker faire social peertopeer processes authority control ndl 01148004 