Open source is
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,
design documents,
or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized
software development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
model that encourages
open collaboration
Open collaboration is 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 is made available to contributors and noncontribu ...
.
A main principle of
open-source software development
Open-source software development (OSSD) 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 sourc ...
is
peer production Peer production (also known as mass collaboration) is a way of producing goods and services that relies on self-organizing communities of individuals. In such communities, the labor of many people is coordinated towards a shared outcome.
Overview
...
, with products such as source code,
blueprint
A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets. Introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842, the process allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number ...
s, 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
Open-source appropriate technology (OSAT) is appropriate technology developed through the principles of the open-design movement. Appropriate technology is technology designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, soc ...
,
and open-source drug discovery.
Open source promotes universal access via an
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
or
free license
A free license or open license is a license which allows others to reuse another creator’s work as they wish. Without a special license, these uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or commercial license. Most free licenses are wo ...
to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint.
Before the phrase ''open source'' became widely adopted, developers and producers have used a variety of other terms. ''Open source'' gained hold with the rise of the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
. The
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, as part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The open-source movement was started to spread the concept/idea of open- ...
arose to clarify
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
,
licensing
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
,
domain
Domain may refer to:
Mathematics
*Domain of a function, the set of input values for which the (total) function is defined
**Domain of definition of a partial function
**Natural domain of a partial function
**Domain of holomorphy of a function
* Do ...
, and consumer issues.
Generally, open source refers to a
computer program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components.
A computer program ...
in which the
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design. Code is released under the terms of a
software license
A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...
. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.
Many large formal institutions have sprung up to support the development of the open-source movement, including the
Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the A ...
, which supports community projects such as the open-source framework
Apache Hadoop
Apache Hadoop () is a collection of open-source software utilities that facilitates using a network of many computers to solve problems involving massive amounts of data and computation. It provides a software framework for distributed storage ...
and the open-source
HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...
server
Apache HTTP.
History
The sharing of technical information predates the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
and the personal computer considerably. For instance, in the early years of automobile development a group of capital
monopolists owned the rights to a
2-cycle gasoline-engine patent originally filed by
George B. Selden
George Baldwin Selden (September 14, 1846 – January 17, 1922) was a patent lawyer and inventor who was granted a U.S. patent for an automobile in 1895.Flink, p. 51 ''Probably the most absurd action in the history of patent law was the granting ...
.
By controlling this patent, they were able to monopolize the industry and force car manufacturers to adhere to their demands, or risk a lawsuit.
In 1911, independent automaker
Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that mi ...
won a challenge to the Selden patent. The result was that the Selden patent became virtually worthless and a new association (which would eventually become the
Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association) was formed.
The new association instituted a cross-licensing agreement among all US automotive manufacturers: although each company would develop technology and file patents, these patents were shared openly and without the exchange of money among all the manufacturers.
By the time the US entered
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, 92 Ford patents and 515 patents from other companies were being shared among these manufacturers, without any exchange of money (or lawsuits).
Early instances of the free sharing of source code include
IBM's source releases of its
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
s and other programs in the 1950s and 1960s, and the
SHARE user group that formed to facilitate the exchange of software.
[ IBM unbundled (began charging for) software 23 June 1969][Dave Pitts' IBM 7090 support](_blank)
An example of distributed source: Page contains a link to IBM 7090/94 IBSYS
IBSYS is the discontinued tape-based operating system that IBM supplied with its IBM 709, IBM 7090 and IBM 7094 computers. A similar operating system (but with several significant differences), also called IBSYS, was provided with IBM 7040 and ...
source, including COBOL
COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...
and FORTRAN compilers. Beginning in the 1960s,
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
researchers used an open "
Request for Comments
A Request for Comments (RFC) is a publication in a series from the principal technical development and standards-setting bodies for the Internet, most prominently the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). An RFC is authored by individuals or g ...
" (RFC) process to encourage feedback in early telecommunication network protocols. This led to the birth of the early Internet in 1969.
The sharing of source code on the Internet began when the Internet was relatively primitive, with software distributed via
UUCP
UUCP is an acronym of Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers.
A command named is one of the prog ...
,
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
,
IRC
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...
, and
Gopher
Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...
.
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...
, for example, was first widely distributed by posts to comp.os.linux on the Usenet, which is also where its development was discussed.
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
followed in this model.
Open source as a term
There is an example of "open source," meaning the source code was published, but not free software (purchasing a license was still required for use), in 1996. Other recollection have it in use during the 1980s.
It was later proposed by a group of people in the
free software movement
The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the s ...
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.
However, the ambiguity of the word "free" exists primarily in English as it can refer to cost. The group included
Christine Peterson
Christine Peterson is an American forecaster, and the co-founder of Foresight Institute. She is credited with suggesting the term "open source" when used in connection with software.
Peterson holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from MIT. ,
Todd Anderson
Todd Anderson (born 2 November 1967) is an Australian former rugby league footballer who played in the 1990s. He played for the Newcastle Knights in 1990 and his only game for the club was in Round 16 1990 against North Sydney at North Sydney ...
,
Larry Augustin
Larry Augustin (born October 10, 1962) is a VP at Amazon Web Services. He formerly was the chairman of the board of directors of SugarCRM. He is a former venture capitalist and the founder of VA Software (now Geeknet). During the height of the d ...
,
Jon Hall,
Sam Ockman
Sam, SAM or variants may refer to:
Places
* Sam, Benin
* Sam, Boulkiemdé, Burkina Faso
* Sam, Bourzanga, Burkina Faso
* Sam, Kongoussi, Burkina Faso
* Sam, Iran
* Sam, Teton County, Idaho, United States, a populated place
People and fictional c ...
,
Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is an American software developer and executive, serving as vice president of open source affairs at Red Hat, Inc., and former President of the Open Source Initiative.
Biography
He earned a bachelor's degree from the Moore Scho ...
and
Eric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar''. He wrote a guidebook for the ...
. Peterson suggested "open source" at a meeting
held at
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...
, in reaction to
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
's announcement in January 1998 of a source code release for
Navigator
A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's primar ...
.
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also c ...
gave his support the following day, and Phil Hughes backed the term in ''
Linux Journal
''Linux Journal'' (''LJ'') is an American monthly technology magazine originally published by Specialized System Consultants, Inc. (SSC) in Seattle, Washington since 1994. In December 2006 the publisher changed to Belltown Media, Inc. in Houston ...
''.
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
, the founder of the free software movement, quickly decided against endorsing the term.
Netscape released its source code under the Netscape Public License
The Netscape Public License (NPL) is a free software license, the license under which Netscape Communications Corporation originally released Mozilla.
Its most notable feature is that it gives the original developer of Mozilla (Netscape, now a ...
and later under the Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird The MPL license is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the concerns ...
.
Raymond was especially active in the effort to popularize the new term. He made the first public call to the free software community to adopt it in February 1998. Shortly after, he founded The Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...
in collaboration with Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens (born around 1958) is an American computer programmer and advocate in the free software movement. He created The Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open ...
.[
The term gained further visibility through an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher ]Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates). He popularised the terms open source and Web 2.0.
Education and early life
Born in County Cork, Ireland, Tim O'Reilly moved to San Francisco, C ...
. Originally titled the "Freeware Summit" and later known as the "Open Source Summit," the event was attended by the leaders of many of the most important free and open-source projects, including Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall
Larry Arnold Wall (born September 27, 1954) is an American computer programmer and author. He created the Perl programming language.
Personal life
Wall grew up in Los Angeles and then Bremerton, Washington, before starting higher education at S ...
, Brian Behlendorf
Brian Behlendorf (born March 30, 1973) is an American technologist, executive, computer programmer and leading figure in the open-source software movement. He was a primary developer of the Apache Web server, the most popular web server software ...
, Eric Allman
Eric Paul Allman (born September 2, 1955) is an American computer programmer who developed sendmail and its precursor delivermail in the late 1970s and early 1980s at UC Berkeley. In 1998, Allman and Greg Olson co-founded the company Sendmail, I ...
, Guido van Rossum
Guido van Rossum (; born 31 January 1956) is a Dutch programmer best known as the creator of the Python programming language, for which he was the " benevolent dictator for life" (BDFL) until he stepped down from the position on 12 July 20 ...
, Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is an American software developer and executive, serving as vice president of open source affairs at Red Hat, Inc., and former President of the Open Source Initiative.
Biography
He earned a bachelor's degree from the Moore Scho ...
, Paul Vixie
Paul Vixie is an American computer scientist whose technical contributions include Domain Name System (DNS) protocol design and procedure, mechanisms to achieve operational robustness of DNS implementations, and significant contributions to open ...
, Jamie Zawinski
Jamie Zawinski (born November 3, 1968), commonly known as jwz, is an American computer programmer, blogger and impresario. He is best known for his role in the creation of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail, Lucid Emacs, Mozilla.org, and XScree ...
, and Eric Raymond. At that meeting, alternatives to the term "free software" were discussed. 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 the same evening.
"Open source" has never managed to entirely supersede the older term "free software," giving rise to the combined term free and open-source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
(FOSS).
Economics
Some economists agree that open-source is an information good
Information goods are commodities that provide value to consumers as a result of the information it contains and refers to any good or service that can be digitalized. Examples of information goods includes books, journals, computer software, music ...
or "knowledge good" with original work involving a significant amount of time, money, and effort. The cost of reproducing the work is low enough that additional users may be added at zero or near zero costthis is referred to as the marginal cost
In economics, the marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented, the cost of producing additional quantity. In some contexts, it refers to an increment of one unit of output, and in others it r ...
of a product. Copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
creates a monopoly so that the price charged to consumers can be significantly higher than the marginal cost of production. This allows the author to recoup the cost of making the original work. Copyright thus creates access costs for consumers who value the work more than the marginal cost but less than the initial production cost. Access costs also pose problems for authors who wish to create a derivative work
In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, previously created first work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in fo ...
—such as a copy of a software program modified to fix a bug or add a feature, or a remix
A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...
of a song—but are unable or unwilling to pay the copyright holder for the right to do so.
Being organized as effectively a "consumers' cooperative
A consumers' co-operative is an enterprise owned by consumers and managed democratically and that aims at fulfilling the needs and aspirations of its members. Such co-operatives operate within the market system, independently of the state, as a fo ...
", open source eliminates some of the access costs of consumers and creators of derivative works by reducing the restrictions of copyright. Basic economic theory predicts that lower costs would lead to higher consumption and also more frequent creation of derivative works. Organizations such as Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
host websites where individuals can file for alternative "licenses", or levels of restriction, for their works.
These self-made protections free the general society of the costs of policing copyright infringement.
Others argue that since consumers do not pay for their copies, creators are unable to recoup the initial cost of production and thus have little economic incentive to create in the first place. By this argument, consumers would lose out because some of the goods they would otherwise purchase would not be available. In practice, content producers can choose whether to adopt a proprietary license and charge for copies, or an open license. Some goods which require large amounts of professional research and development, such as the pharmaceutical industry
The pharmaceutical industry discovers, develops, produces, and markets drugs or pharmaceutical drugs for use as medications to be administered to patients (or self-administered), with the aim to cure them, vaccinate them, or alleviate symptoms. ...
(which depends largely on patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
s, not copyright for intellectual property protection) are almost exclusively proprietary, although increasingly sophisticated technologies are being developed on open-source principles.
There is evidence that open-source development creates enormous value. For example, in the context of 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 a ...
design, digital designs are shared for free and anyone with access to digital manufacturing technologies (e.g. RepRap
The RepRap project started in England in 2005 as a University of Bath initiative to develop a low-cost 3D printer that can print most of its own components, but it is now made up of hundreds of collaborators worldwide. RepRap is short for rep''li ...
3D printers) can replicate the product for the cost of materials. The original sharer may receive feedback and potentially improvements on the original design from the peer production Peer production (also known as mass collaboration) is a way of producing goods and services that relies on self-organizing communities of individuals. In such communities, the labor of many people is coordinated towards a shared outcome.
Overview
...
community.
Many open source projects have a high economic value. According to the Battery Open Source Software Index (BOSS), the ten economically most important open source projects are:
The rank given is based on the activity regarding projects in online discussions, on GitHub, on search activity in search engines and on the influence on the labour market.
Licensing alternatives
Alternative arrangements have also been shown to result in good creation outside of the proprietary license model. Examples include:
*
Creation for its own sake – For example, Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
editors add content for recreation. Artists have a drive to create. Both communities benefit from free starting material.
* Voluntary after-the-fact donations – used by shareware
Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...
, street performers, and public broadcasting
Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing ...
in the United States.
* Patron – For example, open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
publishing relies on institutional and government funding of research faculty, who also have a professional incentive to publish for reputation and career advancement. Works of the U.S. federal government are automatically released into the public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
.
* Freemium
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...
– Give away a limited version for free and charge for a premium version (potentially using a dual license
Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses ...
).
* Give away the product and charge something related – Charge for support of open-source enterprise software
Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users. Such organizations include businesses, schools, interest-based user groups, ...
, give away music but charge for concert admission.
* Give away work in order to gain market share – Used by artists, in corporate software to spoil a dominant competitor (for example in the browser wars
A browser war is competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war," (1995-2001) pitted Microsoft's Internet Explorer against Netscape's Navigator. Browser wars continued with the decline of Internet Explorer ...
and the Android operating system).
* For own use – Businesses or individual software developers often create software to solve a problem, bearing the full cost of initial creation. They will then open source the solution, and benefit from the improvements others make for their own needs. Communalizing the maintenance burden distributes the cost across more users; free riders
In the social sciences, the free-rider problem is a type of market failure that occurs when those who benefit from resources, public goods (such as public roads or public library), or services of a communal nature do not pay for them or under-p ...
can also benefit without undermining the creation process.
Open collaboration
The open-source model is a decentralized software development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
model that encourages open collaboration
Open collaboration is 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 is made available to contributors and noncontribu ...
, 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
Open-source software development (OSSD) 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 sourc ...
is peer production Peer production (also known as mass collaboration) is a way of producing goods and services that relies on self-organizing communities of individuals. In such communities, the labor of many people is coordinated towards a shared outcome.
Overview
...
, with products such as source code, blueprint
A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets. Introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842, the process allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number ...
s, 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
Open-source appropriate technology (OSAT) is appropriate technology developed through the principles of the open-design movement. Appropriate technology is technology designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, soc ...
, and open-source drug discovery.[ "Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria Consortium]
The open-source model for software development inspired the use of the term to refer to other forms of open collaboration, such as in Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
s, mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...
s[Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Majchrzak, Ann (2008)]
Knowledge Collaboration Among Professionals Protecting National Security: Role of Transactive Memories in Ego-Centered Knowledge Networks
''Organization Science'', 19(2), 260-276 . and online communities
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...
.[Faraj, S., Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Majchrzak, Ann (2011)]
Knowledge Collaboration in Online Communities
''Organization Science'', 22(5), 1224-1239, Open collaboration is also thought to be the operating principle underlining a gamut of diverse ventures, including TEDx
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
and Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
.
Open collaboration is the principle underlying peer production Peer production (also known as mass collaboration) is a way of producing goods and services that relies on self-organizing communities of individuals. In such communities, the labor of many people is coordinated towards a shared outcome.
Overview
...
, mass collaboration
Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-s ...
, and wikinomics
''Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything'' is a book by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, first published in December 2006. It explores how some companies in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration and open-sourc ...
. It was observed initially in open source software, but can also be found in many other instances, such as in Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
s, mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...
s, Internet communities
A community is a Level of analysis, social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place (geography), place, Norm (social), norms, religion, values, Convention (norm), customs, or Identity (social science), identity. Communiti ...
, and many instances of open content, such as Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
. It also explains some instances of crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
, collaborative consumption
Collaborative consumption is the set of those resource circulation systems in which consumers both "obtain" and "provide", temporarily or permanently, valuable resources or services through direct interaction with other consumers or through a m ...
, and open innovation
Open innovation is a term used to promote an information age mindset toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs. The benefits and driving forces behind increased openness have bee ...
.
Riehle et al. define open collaboration as collaboration based on three principles of egalitarianism
Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hu ...
, meritocracy
Meritocracy (''merit'', from Latin , and ''-cracy'', from Ancient Greek 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and achiev ...
, and self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffi ...
. Levine and Prietula define open collaboration as "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." This definition captures multiple instances, all joined by similar principles. For example, all of the elements — goods of economic value, open access to contribute and consume, interaction and exchange, purposeful yet loosely coordinated work — are present in an open source software project, in Wikipedia, or in a user forum or community. They can also be present in a commercial website that is based on user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...
. In all of these instances of open collaboration, anyone can contribute and anyone can freely partake in the fruits of sharing, which are produced by interacting participants who are loosely coordinated.
An annual conference dedicated to the research and practice of open collaboration is the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
OpenSym is a shorthand for International Symposium on Open Collaboration, formerly International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, also formerly WikiSym or the Wiki Symposium, a conference dedicated to wiki research and practice. In 20 ...
(OpenSym, formerly WikiSym). As per its website, the group defines open collaboration as "collaboration that is egalitarian (everyone can join, no principled or artificial barriers to participation exist), meritocratic (decisions and status are merit-based rather than imposed) and self-organizing (processes adapt to people rather than people adapt to pre-defined processes)."
Open-source license
Open source promotes universal access via an open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
or free license
A free license or open license is a license which allows others to reuse another creator’s work as they wish. Without a special license, these uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or commercial license. Most free licenses are wo ...
to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. Before the phrase ''open source'' became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of other terms. ''Open source'' gained hold in part due to the rise of the Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
. The 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, as part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The open-source movement was started to spread the concept/idea of open- ...
arose to clarify copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
, licensing
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
, domain
Domain may refer to:
Mathematics
*Domain of a function, the set of input values for which the (total) function is defined
**Domain of definition of a partial function
**Natural domain of a partial function
**Domain of holomorphy of a function
* Do ...
, and consumer issues.
An open-source license is a type of license
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
for computer software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
and other products that allows the source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
, blueprint or design to be used, modified or shared (with or without modification) 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
A non-commercial (also spelled noncommercial) activity is an activity that does not, in some sense, involve commerce, at least relative to similar activities that do have a commercial objective or emphasis. For example, advertising-free community ...
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
Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...
license). One popular set of open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
licenses are those approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) based on their Open Source Definition
''The Open Source Definition'' is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark.
The definition was taken from the exact text of the Debian Free ...
(OSD).
Applications
Social and political views have been affected by the growth of the concept of open source. Advocates in one field often support the expansion of open source in other fields. But Eric Raymond
The given name Eric, Erich, Erikk, Erik, Erick, or Eirik is derived from the Old Norse name ''Eiríkr'' (or ''Eríkr'' in Old East Norse due to monophthongization).
The first element, ''ei-'' may be derived from the older Proto-Norse ''* ain ...
and other founders of the open-source movement have sometimes publicly argued against speculation about applications outside software, saying that strong arguments for software openness should not be weakened by overreaching into areas where the story may be less compelling. The broader impact of the open-source movement, and the extent of its role in the development of new information sharing procedures, remain to be seen.
The open-source movement has inspired increased transparency and liberty in biotechnology
Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used b ...
research, for example CAMBIA
Cambia is an Australian-based global non-profit social enterprise focusing on open science, biology, innovation system reform and intellectual property. Its projects include The Lens, formerly known as Patent Lens, and the Biological Innova ...
Even the research methodologies themselves can benefit from the application of open-source principles. It has also given rise to the rapidly-expanding 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 a ...
movement.
Computer software
Open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
is software which source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees.
LibreOffice and the GNU Image Manipulation Program are examples of open source software. As they do with proprietary software, users must accept the terms of a license when they use open source software—but the legal terms of open source licenses differ dramatically from those of proprietary licenses.
Open-source code can evolve through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual programmers as well as large companies. Some of the individual programmers who start an open-source project may end up establishing companies offering products or services incorporating open-source programs. Examples of open-source software products are:
*Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
(that much of world's server parks are running)
*MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...
(that Wikipedia is based upon)
* Many more:
** List of free and open-source software packages
This is a list of free and open-source software packages, computer software licensed under free software licenses and open-source licenses. Software that fits the Free Software Definition may be more appropriately called free software; the GNU p ...
** List of formerly proprietary software
This is a list of notable software packages which were published under a proprietary software license but later released as free and open-source software, or into the public domain.
In some cases, the company continues to publish proprietary rel ...
Electronics
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 a ...
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:
* Openmoko
Openmoko is a discontinued project to create a family of Open-source model, open source mobile phones, including the hardware specification, the operating system (Openmoko Linux), and actual smartphone development implementation like the Neo 19 ...
: a family of open-source mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...
s, including the hardware specification and the operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
.
* OpenRISC
OpenRISC is a project to develop a series of open-source hardware based central processing units (CPUs) on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. It includes an instruction set architecture (ISA) using an open-source licen ...
: an open-source microprocessor family, with architecture specification licensed under GNU GPL
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...
and implementation under LGPL
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...
.
* Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
's OpenSPARC OpenSPARC is an open-source hardware project started in December 2005. The initial contribution to the project was Sun Microsystems' register-transfer level (RTL) Verilog code for a full 64-bit, 32- thread microprocessor, the UltraSPARC T1 process ...
T1 Multicore processor. Sun has released it under GPL.
* Arduino
Arduino () is an open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed unde ...
, a microcontroller platform for hobbyists, artists and designers.
* Simputer
The Simputer was a self-contained, open hardware Linux-based handheld computer, first released in 2002. Developed in, and primarily distributed within India, the product was envisioned as a low-cost alternative to personal computers. With initial ...
, an open hardware handheld computer
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
, designed in India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
for use in environments where computing devices such as personal computers are deemed inappropriate.
* LEON
Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to:
Places
Europe
* León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León
* Province of León, Spain
* Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again f ...
: A family of open-source microprocessors distributed in a library with peripheral IP core
In electronic design, a semiconductor intellectual property core (SIP core), IP core, or IP block is a reusable unit of logic, cell, or integrated circuit layout design that is the intellectual property of one party. IP cores can be licensed to ...
s, open SPARC
SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system developed ...
V8 specification, implementation available under GNU GPL
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...
.
* Tinkerforge
Tinkerforge is an open source hardware platform of stackable microcontroller building blocks (Bricks) that can control different modules (Bricklets). The primary communication interface of the building blocks can be extended using Master Extensions ...
: A system of open-source stackable microcontroller building blocks. Allows control of motors and read out sensors with the programming languages C, C++, C#, Object Pascal, Java, PHP, Python and Ruby over a USB or Wifi connection on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. All of the hardware is licensed under CERN OHL The CERN Open Hardware Licence (OHL or CERN OHL) is a license used in open-source hardware projects. It was created by CERN, which published version 1.0 in March 2011. Version 1.1 was published in July 2011. Version 1.2 was published in September ...
(CERN Open Hardware License).
* Open Compute Project
The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that shares designs of data center products and best practices among companies, including ARM, Meta, IBM, Wiwynn, Intel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Hewlett ...
: designs for computer data center including power supply, Intel motherboard, AMD motherboard, chassis, racks, battery cabinet, and aspects of electrical and mechanical design.
Food and beverages
Some publishers of open-access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
journals have argued that data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted ...
from food science
Food science is the basic science and applied science of food; its scope starts at overlap with agricultural science and nutritional science and leads through the scientific aspects of food safety and food processing, informing the developm ...
and gastronomy
Gastronomy is the study of the relationship between food and culture, the art of preparing and serving rich or delicate and appetizing food, the cooking styles of particular regions, and the science of good eating. One who is well versed in gastr ...
studies should be freely available to aid reproducibility
Reproducibility, also known as replicability and repeatability, is a major principle underpinning the scientific method. For the findings of a study to be reproducible means that results obtained by an experiment or an observational study or in a ...
. A number of people have published creative commons licensed recipe books.
* Open-source cola
Open-source cola is any cola soft drink produced according to a published and shareable recipe. Unlike the secretive Coca-Cola formula, the recipes are openly published and their re-use is encouraged. The texts of OpenCola and Cube-Cola recipes ...
s – cola soft drinks, similar to Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...
and Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo. Originally created and developed in 1893 by Caleb Bradham and introduced as Brad's Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898, and then shortened to Pepsi in 1961.
History
Pepsi was ...
, whose recipe is open source and developed by volunteers. The taste is said to be comparable to that of the standard beverages. Most corporations producing beverages hold their formulas as closely guarded secrets.
* Free Beer
Opay Beer, originally known as Vores øl - An open source beer (English: ''Our Beer''), is a brand of beer and the first with an "open"/"free" brand and recipe. The recipe and trademark elements are published under the Creative Commons CC ...
(originally ''Vores Øl'') – is an open-source beer created by students at the IT-University in Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
together with Superflex, an artist collective, to illustrate how open-source concepts might be applied outside the digital world.
Digital content
* Open-content projects organized by the Wikimedia Foundation – Sites such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary have embraced the open-content Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
content licenses. These licenses were designed to adhere to principles similar to various open-source software development licenses. Many of these licenses ensure that content remains free for re-use, that source documents are made readily available to interested parties, and that changes to content are accepted easily back into the system. Important sites embracing open-source-like ideals are Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...
and Wikisource
Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project (each instance usually rep ...
, both of which post many books on which the copyright has expired and are thus in the public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
, ensuring that anyone has free, unlimited access to that content.
* Open ICEcat
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' (YF ...
is an open catalog for the IT, CE and Lighting sectors with product data-sheets based on Open Content License agreement. The digital content are distributed in XML and URL formats.
*Google Sketchup
SketchUp is a suite of subscription products that include SketchUp Pro Desktop, a 3D modeling Computer-Aided Design (CAD) program for a broad range of drawing and design applications — including architectural, interior design, industrial and ...
's 3D Warehouse
SketchUp is a suite of subscription products that include SketchUp Pro Desktop, a 3D modeling Computer-Aided Design (CAD) program for a broad range of drawing and design applications — including architectural, interior design, industrial and ...
is an open-source design community centered around the use of proprietary software that's distributed free of charge.
* The University of Waterloo Stratford Campus
The Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, also known as the University of Waterloo Stratford School and formerly the University of Waterloo Stratford Campus, is a satellite campus of the University of Waterloo located in Stratfo ...
invites students every year to use its three-storey Christie MicroTiles
MicroTiles are discontinued modular rear projection cube units designed, developed and marketed by Christie Digital. The building-block nature of the system made the configuration of the overall screen area and shape flexible. This allowed for si ...
wall as a digital canvas for their creative work.
Medicine
* Pharmaceuticals – There have been several proposals for open-source pharmaceutical development, which led to the establishment of the Tropical Disease Initiative and the Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria Consortium.
* Genomics – The term "open-source genomics" refers to the combination of rapid release of sequence data (especially raw reads) and crowdsourced analyses from bioinformaticians around the world that characterised the analysis of the 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak.
* OpenEMR
OpenEMR is a medical practice management software which also supports Electronic Medical Records (EMR). It is ONC Complete Ambulatory EHR certified and features fully integrated electronic medical records, practice management for a medical practice ...
– OpenEMR is an ONC-ATB Ambulatory EHR 2011-2012 certified electronic health records and medical practice management application. It features fully integrated electronic health, records, practice management, scheduling, electronic billing, and is the base for many EHR programs.
Science and engineering
* Research – The Science Commons
Science Commons (SC) was a Creative Commons project for designing strategies and tools for faster, more efficient web-enabled scientific research. The organization's goals were to identify unnecessary barriers to research, craft policy guidelin ...
was created as an alternative to the expensive legal costs of sharing and reusing scientific works in journals etc.
* Research – The Open Solar Outdoors Test Field The Open Solar Outdoors Test Field (OSOTF) is a project organized under open source principles, which is a fully grid-connected test system that continuously monitors the output of many solar photovoltaic modules and correlates their performance t ...
(OSOTF) is a grid-connected photovoltaic
Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially us ...
test system, which continuously monitors the output of a number of photovoltaic modules and correlates their performance to a long list of highly accurate meteorological readings. The OSOTF is organized under open-source principles – All data and analysis is to be made freely available to the entire photovoltaic community and the general public.
* Engineering – Hyperloop
A hyperloop is a proposed high-speed transportion system for both public and goods transport. The idea was picked up by Elon Musk to describe a modern project based on the vactrain concept (first appearance in 1799). Hyperloop systems compris ...
, a form of high-speed transport proposed by entrepreneur Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...
, which he describes as "an elevated, reduced-pressure tube that contains pressurized capsules driven within the tube by a number of linear electric motors".
* Construction – WikiHouse
WikiHouse is an open-source project for designing and building houses. It endeavours to democratise and simplify the construction of sustainable, resource-light dwellings. The project was initiated in the summer of 2011 by Alastair Parvin and N ...
is an open-source project for designing and building house
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...
s.
* Energy research - The Open Energy Modelling Initiative
The Open Energy Modelling Initiative (openmod) is a grassroots community of energy system modellers from universities and research institutes across Europe and elsewhere. The initiative promotes the use of open-source software and open data ...
promotes open-source models and open data in energy research and policy advice.
Robotics
An open-source robot is a robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...
whose blueprints, schematics, or source code are released under an open-source model
Other
* Open-source principles can be applied to technical areas such as digital communication protocols and data storage formats.
* Open-design – which involves applying open-source methodologies to the design of artifacts and systems in the physical world. It is very nascent but has huge potential.
* Open-source appropriate technology
Open-source appropriate technology (OSAT) is appropriate technology developed through the principles of the open-design movement. Appropriate technology is technology designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, soc ...
(OSAT) refers to technologies that are designed in the same fashion as free and open-source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
.[A. J. Buitenhuis, I. Zelenika and J. M. Pearce,]
Open Design-Based Strategies to Enhance Appropriate Technology Development
, ''Proceedings of the 14th Annual National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance Conference : Open'', 25–27 March 2010, pp. 1-12. These technologies must be "appropriate technology
Appropriate technology is a movement (and its manifestations) encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, affordable by locals, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and locally ...
" (AT) – meaning technology that is designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, and economic aspects of the community it is intended for. An example of this application is the use of open-source 3D printers like the RepRap
The RepRap project started in England in 2005 as a University of Bath initiative to develop a low-cost 3D printer that can print most of its own components, but it is now made up of hundreds of collaborators worldwide. RepRap is short for rep''li ...
to manufacture appropriate technology.
* Teaching
Teaching is the practice implemented by a ''teacher'' aimed at transmitting skills (knowledge, know-how, and interpersonal skills) to a learner, a student, or any other audience in the context of an educational institution. Teaching is closely re ...
– which involves applying the concepts of open source to instruction using a shared web space as a platform to improve upon learning, organizational, and management challenges. An example of an Open-source courseware is the Java Education & Development Initiative (JEDI). Other examples include Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also in ...
and wikiversity
Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from Wikipedia in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather ...
. At the university level, the use of open-source-appropriate technology
Open-source appropriate technology (OSAT) is appropriate technology developed through the principles of the open-design movement. Appropriate technology is technology designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, soc ...
classroom projects has been shown to be successful in forging the connection between science/engineering and social benefit: This approach has the potential to use university students' access to resources and testing equipment in furthering the development of appropriate technology
Appropriate technology is a movement (and its manifestations) encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, affordable by locals, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and locally ...
. Similarly OSAT has been used as a tool for improving service learning
Service-learning is an educational approach that combines learning objectives with community service in order to provide a pragmatic, progressive learning experience while meeting societal needs.
Service-learning involves students in service proje ...
.
* There are few examples of business information (methodologies, advice, guidance, practices) using the open-source model, although this is another case where the potential is enormous. ITIL
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of detailed practices for IT activities such as IT service management (ITSM) and IT asset management (ITAM) that focus on aligning IT services with the needs of business.
ITIL de ...
is close to open source. It uses the Cathedral model (no mechanism exists for user contribution) and the content must be bought for a fee that is small by business consulting standards (hundreds of British pounds). Various checklists are published by government, banks or accounting firms.
* An open-source group emerged in 2012 that is attempting to design a firearm that may be downloaded from the internet and "printed" on a 3D Printer
3D printing or additive manufacturing is the Manufacturing, construction of a three-dimensional object from a computer-aided design, CAD model or a digital 3D modeling, 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is ...
. Calling itself Defense Distributed
Defense Distributed is an online open-source hardware organization that develops digital schematics of firearms in CAD files, or "wiki weapons", that may be downloaded from the Internet and used in 3D printing or CNC milling applications. Among ...
, the group wants to facilitate "a working plastic gun that could be downloaded and reproduced by anybody with a 3D printer".
* Agrecol, a German NGO has developed an open-source licence for seeds operating with copyleft
Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...
and created OpenSourceSeeds as a respective service provider. Breeders that apply the license to their new invented material prevent it from the threat of privatisation and help to establish a commons-based breeding sector as an alternative to the commercial sector.
* Open Source Ecology
Open Source Ecology (OSE) is a network of farmers, engineers, architects and supporters, whose main goal is the eventual manufacturing of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). As described by Open Source Ecology "the GVCS is an open techn ...
, farm equipment and global village construction kit.
"Open" versus "free" versus "free and open"
Free and open-source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
(FOSS) or free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) is openly shared source code that is licensed without any restrictions on usage, modification, or distribution. Confusion persists about this definition because the "free", also known as "libre", refers to the freedom of the product, not the price, expense, cost, or charge. For example, "being free to speak" is not the same as "free beer".
Conversely, Richard Stallman argues the "obvious meaning" of term "open source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted, although the proponents of the term say the conditions in the Open Source Definition
''The Open Source Definition'' is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark.
The definition was taken from the exact text of the Debian Free ...
must be fulfilled.
"Free and open" should not be confused with public ownership (state ownership
State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public ownershi ...
), deprivatization (nationalization
Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...
), anti-privatization (anti-corporate activism
Anti-corporate activism refers to the idea of activism that is directed against the private sector, and specifically against larger corporations. It stems from the idea that the activities and impacts of big business are detrimental to the pub ...
), or transparent behavior.
* GNU
GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...
** GNU Manifesto
__NOTOC__
The ''GNU Manifesto'' is a call-to-action by Richard Stallman encouraging participation and support of the GNU Project's goal in developing the GNU free computer operating system. The GNU Manifesto was published in March 1985 in '' D ...
** Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
* Gratis versus libre
The English adjective ''free'' is commonly used in one of two meanings: "at no monetary cost" (''gratis'') and "with little or no restriction" (''libre''). This ambiguity of ''free'' can cause issues where the distinction is important, as it ...
(no cost vs no restriction)
Software
Generally, open source refers to a computer program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components.
A computer program ...
in which the source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
is available to the general public for use for any (including commercial) purpose, 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
A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...
. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.
:* List of free and open-source software packages
This is a list of free and open-source software packages, computer software licensed under free software licenses and open-source licenses. Software that fits the Free Software Definition may be more appropriately called free software; the GNU p ...
* 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 compa ...
, a copyright license that makes the source code available with a product
** ''The Open Source Definition
''The Open Source Definition'' is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark.
The definition was taken from the exact text of the Debian Free ...
'', as used by the Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...
for open source software
* Open-source model
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
, a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration
* Open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
, software which permits the use and modification of its source code
* 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 p ...
* Open-source software advocacy
* Open-source software development
Open-source software development (OSSD) 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 sourc ...
* 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, as part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The open-source movement was started to spread the concept/idea of ope ...
* Open-source video game
An open-source video game, or simply an open-source game, is a video game whose source code is open-source. They are often freely distributable and sometimes cross-platform compatible.
Definition and differentiation
Not all open-source games ...
s
** List of open-source video games
This is a list of notable open-source video games. Open-source video games are assembled from and are themselves open-source software, including public domain games with public domain source code. This list also includes games in which the engine i ...
* Business models for open-source software
Companies whose business centers on the development of open-source software employ a variety of business models to solve the challenge of how to make money providing software that is by definition licensed free of charge. Each of these business str ...
* Comparison of open-source and closed-source software
Free/open-source software – the source availability model used by free and open-source software (FOSS) – and closed source are two approaches to the distribution of software.
Background
Under the ''closed-source'' model source code is ...
* Diversity in open-source software
The open-source-software movement is commonly cited to have a Diversity in computing, diversity problem. In some ways it reflects that of the general gender disparity in computing, but in general is assumed to be even more severe. The same can be e ...
* MapGuide Open Source
MapGuide Open Source is a web-based map-making platform that enables users to quickly develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services. The application was introduced as open-source by Autodesk in November 2005, and the cod ...
, a web-based map-making
Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an im ...
platform to develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services (not to be confused with OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...
(OSM), a collaborative project to create a free editable map
A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes.
Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...
of the world).
Agriculture, economy, manufacturing and production
* Open-source appropriate technology
Open-source appropriate technology (OSAT) is appropriate technology developed through the principles of the open-design movement. Appropriate technology is technology designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, soc ...
(OSAT), is designed for environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, economic, and community aspects
* Open-design movement
The open-design movement involves the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. This includes the making of both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardw ...
, development of physical products, machines and systems via publicly shared design information, including free and open-source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
and 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 a ...
, among many others:
** Open Architecture Network, improving global living conditions through innovative sustainable design
Environmentally sustainable design (also called environmentally conscious design, eco-design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability ...
** OpenCores
OpenCores is a community developing digital open-source hardware through electronic design automation (EDA), with a similar ethos as the free software movement. OpenCores hopes to eliminate redundant design work and slash development costs. A ...
, a community developing digital electronic 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 a ...
** Open Design Alliance
Open Design Alliance is a nonprofit organization creating software development kits (SDKs) for engineering applications. ODA offers interoperability tools for CAD, BIM, and Mechanical industries including .dwg, .dxf, .dgn, Autodesk Revit, Autodes ...
, develops Teigha
Open Design Alliance is a nonprofit organization creating software development kits (SDKs) for engineering applications. ODA offers interoperability tools for CAD, BIM, and Mechanical industries including .dwg, .dxf, .dgn, Autodesk Revit, Autode ...
, a software development platform to create engineering applications including CAD
Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...
software
** Open Hardware and Design Alliance
NOTE: This organization doesn't seem to exist anymore, the http://www.ohanda.org/ URL has been found to be inactive in January 2023.
The Open Hardware and Design Alliance (OHANDA) aims at encouraging the sharing of open hardware and designs. Th ...
(OHANDA), sharing open hardware and designs via free online services
** Open Source Ecology
Open Source Ecology (OSE) is a network of farmers, engineers, architects and supporters, whose main goal is the eventual manufacturing of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). As described by Open Source Ecology "the GVCS is an open techn ...
(OSE), a network of farmers, engineers, architects and supporters striving to manufacture the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS)
** OpenStructures
OpenStructures is an open source modular construction model based on a shared geometrical grid, called the OS grid. It was conceived by designer Thomas Lommée, and first demonstrated at the Z33, a house for contemporary art. According to Lommee ...
(OSP), a modular construction
Modular construction is a construction technique which involves the prefabrication of 2D panels or 3D volumetric structures in off-site factories and transportation to construction sites for assembly. This process has the potential to be superior ...
model where everyone designs on the basis of one shared geometrical OS grid
* Open manufacturing Open manufacturing, also known as open production, maker manufacturing, and with the slogan "Design Global, Manufacture Local" is a new model of socioeconomic production in which physical objects are produced in an open, collaborative and distribute ...
or "Open Production" or "Design Global, Manufacture Local", a new socioeconomic
Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their local ...
production model to openly and collaboratively produce and distribute physical objects
* Open-source architecture
Open-source architecture is an emerging paradigm that advocates new procedures in imagination and formation of virtual and real spaces within a universal infrastructure. Drawing from references as diverse as open-source culture, modular design, ava ...
(OSArc), emerging procedures in imagination and formation of virtual and real spaces within an inclusive universal infrastructure
Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...
* Open-source cola
Open-source cola is any cola soft drink produced according to a published and shareable recipe. Unlike the secretive Coca-Cola formula, the recipes are openly published and their re-use is encouraged. The texts of OpenCola and Cube-Cola recipes ...
, cola soft drinks made to open-sourced recipes
* 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 a ...
, or open hardware, computer hardware, such as microprocessors, that is designed in the same fashion as open source software
** List of open-source hardware projects
This is a list of open-source hardware projects, including computer systems and components, cameras, radio, telephony, science education, machines and tools, robotics, renewable energy, home automation, medical and biotech, automotive, prototy ...
* Open-source product development (OSPD), collaborative product and process openness of open-source hardware for any interested participants
* Open-source robotics
Open-source robotics (OSR) is where the physical artifacts of the subject are offered by the open design movement. This branch of robotics makes use of open-source hardware and free and open-source software providing blueprints, schematics, and s ...
, physical artifacts of the subject are offered by the open design movement
* Open Source Seed Initiative The Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) is an organization that developed and maintains a mechanism through which plant breeders can designate the new crop varieties they have bred as open source. This mechanism is advanced as an alternative to pate ...
, open source varieties of crop seeds, as an alternative to patent-protected seeds sold by large agriculture companies.
Science and medicine
* Open science, the movement to make scientific research, data and dissemination accessible to all levels of an inquiring society, amateur or professional
** Open science data Open scientific data or open research data is a type of open data focused on publishing observations and results of scientific activities available for anyone to analyze and reuse. A major purpose of the drive for open data is to allow the verificat ...
, a type of open data
Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license.
The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...
focused on publishing observations and results of scientific activities available for anyone to analyze and reuse
** Open Science Framework
The Center for Open Science is a non-profit technology organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia with a mission to "increase the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research." Brian Nosek and Jeffrey Spies founded the or ...
and the Center for Open Science
The Center for Open Science is a non-profit technology organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia with a mission to "increase the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research." Brian Nosek and Jeffrey Spies founded the or ...
** Open Source Lab (disambiguation) Open Source Lab may refer to:
* ''Open-Source Lab'' (book), a 2014 book by Joshua M. Pearce
* Boston Open Source Science Laboratory, a biology lab in Somerville, MA, United States
* UTEP Open Source Research Lab, a group-based violence study at t ...
, several laboratories
** ''Open-Source Lab'' (book), a 2014 book by Joshua M. Pearce
*: See also: The antithesis
Antithesis (Greek for "setting opposite", from "against" and "placing") is used in writing or speech either as a proposition that contrasts with or reverses some previously mentioned proposition, or when two opposites are introduced together f ...
of open science is Scientism
Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.
While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientis ...
, a blind faith in profit driven proprietary (closed) science and marketing (ie. proprietary software
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...
, proprietary protocol
In telecommunications, a proprietary protocol is a communications protocol owned by a single organization or individual.
Intellectual property rights and enforcement
Ownership by a single organization gives the owner the ability to place restricti ...
s, fields of private biomedical engineering
Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes (e.g., diagnostic or therapeutic). BME is also traditionally logical sciences ...
, biological patent
A biological patent is a patent on an invention in the field of biology that by law allows the patent holder to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the protected invention for a limited period of time. The scope and reach of ...
s, chemical patent
A chemical patent, pharmaceutical patent or drug patent is a patent for an invention in the chemical or pharmaceuticals industry. Strictly speaking, in most jurisdictions, there are essentially no differences between the legal requirements to ob ...
s (drugs), minimal sufficiency of disclosure
Sufficiency of disclosure or enablement is a patent law requirement that a patent application disclose a claimed invention in sufficient detail so that the person skilled in the art could carry out that claimed invention. The requirement is fu ...
, etc.).
* Open-notebook science Open-notebook science is the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded. This involves placing the personal, or laboratory, notebook of the researcher online along with all raw and ...
, the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project
Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness t ...
publicly available online as it is recorded
* Open Source Physics Open Source Physics, or OSP, is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Davidson College, whose mission is to spread the use of open source code libraries that take care of a lot of the heavy lifting for physics: drawing and plot ...
(OSP), a National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
and Davidson College
Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. It was established in 1837 by the Concord Presbytery and named after Revolutionary War general William Lee Davidson, who was killed at the nearby Battle of Cowan ...
project to spread the use of open source code libraries that take care of much of the heavy lifting for physics
* Open Source Geospatial Foundation
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 200 ...
* NASA Open Source Agreement
The NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) is an OSI-approved software license. The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) releases some software (such as NASA World Wind) under this license.
Legislation and NASA policy
P ...
(NOSA), an OSI
OSI may refer to:
Places
* Osijek Airport (IATA code: OSI), an airport in Croatia
* Ősi, a village in Veszprém county, Hungary
* Oši, an archaeological site in Semigallia, Latvia
* Osi, a village in Ido-Osi, Ekiti State, Nigeria
* Osi, Ekiti ...
-approved software license
A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...
* List of open-source software for mathematics
This is a list of open-source software to be used for high-order mathematical calculations. This software has played an important role in the field of mathematics. Open-source software in mathematics has become pivotal in education because of t ...
* List of open-source bioinformatics software
This is a list of computer software which is made for bioinformatics and released under open-source software licenses with articles in Wikipedia.
See also
* List of sequence alignment software
* List of open-source healthcare software
* List o ...
* List of open-source health software
The following is a list of notable software packages and applications licensed under an open-source license or in the public domain for use in the health care industry.
Public health and biosurveillance
* Epi Info is public domain statistical ...
* List of open-source health hardware
Media
* Open-source film Open-source films (also known as open-content films and free-content films) are films which are produced and distributed by using free and open-source and open content methodologies. Their sources are freely available and the licenses used meet t ...
, open source movies
** List of open-source films
** Open Source Cinema, a collaborative website to produce a documentary film
* Open-source journalism
Open-source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com. Although the term was not actually used in the body text of Leonard's article ...
, commonly describes a spectrum on online publications, forms of innovative publishing of online journalism
Digital journalism, also known as netizen journalism or online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. What constitutes digital j ...
, and content voting, rather than the sourcing of news stories by "professional" journalists
** Open-source investigation
*: ''See also: Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
, crowdsourced journalism, crowdsourced investigation, trutherism, and historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) views held by professional scholars about a historical event or times ...
considered "fringe" by corporate media.''
* Open-source record label
Open-source record labels are record labels that release music under copyleft licenses, that is, licenses that allow free redistribution and may allow free modification of the tracks.
They present free, libre, and open content, and present this a ...
, open source music
* "Open Source", a 1960s rock song performed by The Magic Mushrooms
* ''Open Source'' (radio show), a radio show using open content information gathering methods hosted by Christopher Lydon
Christopher Lydon (born 1940 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American media personality and author. He was the original host of '' The Connection'', produced by WBUR and syndicated to other NPR stations, and created '' Open Source'', a weekly r ...
* Open textbook
An open textbook is a textbook licensed under an open license, and made available online to be freely used by students, teachers and members of the public. Many open textbooks are distributed in either print, e-book, or audio formats that may be do ...
, an open copyright licensed textbook made freely available online for students, teachers, and the public
Organizations
* Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...
(OSI), an organization dedicated to promote open source
* Open Source Software Institute
The Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) is a U.S.-based 501(c)(6), non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the development and implementation of open-source software solutions within US Federal, state and municipal government agencie ...
* Journal of Open Source Software
The ''Journal of Open Source Software'' is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal covering open-source software from any research discipline. The journal was founded in 2016 by editors Arfon Smith, Kyle Niemeyer, Dan Katz, Kevin Moerman, an ...
* Open Source Day
Open Source Day is an international conference gathering fans of open solutions from Central and Eastern Europe. Mission of the event is to introduce open source solutions to Polish public and business institutions and popularize it as a secure, ...
, the dated varies from year to year for an international conference for fans of open solutions from Central and Eastern Europe
Central and Eastern Europe is a term encompassing the countries in the Baltics, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe (mostly the Balkans), usually meaning former communist states from the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact in Europe. ...
* Open Source Developers' Conference
The Open Source Developers' Conference (OSDC) was a non-profit conference for developers of open-source software. It was started in Australia in 2004, and later expanded to Israel, Taiwan, Malaysia, France and Norway, where conferences began in 2 ...
* Open Source Development Labs
Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) was a non-profit organization supported by a consortium to promote Linux for enterprise computing. Founded in 2000, OSDL positioned itself as an independent, non-profit lab for developers who are adding enterpris ...
(OSDL), a non-profit corporation that provides space for open-source project
* Open Source Drug Discovery Open Source Drug Discovery is a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India (CSIR)-led Team India Consortium with global participation offering a collaborative drug discovery platform for neglected tropical diseases like leishmaniasis, w ...
, a collaborative drug discovery platform for neglected tropical diseases
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a diverse group of tropical disease, tropical infections that are common in low-income populations in Developing country, developing regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. They are caused by a variety ...
* Open Source Technology Group (OSTG), news, forums, and other SourceForge
SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...
resources for IT
* Open source in Kosovo
The first open-source software project in Kosovo was the adjustment of the Open Office Packet in December 2003.
On 28 July 2004, GGSL, an Albanian team of Linux users, was one of the first public organizations for getting information about open ...
* Open Source University Meetup
* New Zealand Open Source Awards
The New Zealand Open Source Awards celebrate open source developments in New Zealand at a biannual awards ceremony, held since 2007. The awards are run by the New Zealand Open Source Society
The New Zealand Open Source Society is an incorporat ...
Procedures
* Open security
Open security is the use of open source philosophies and methodologies to approach computer security and other information security challenges. Traditional application security is based on the premise that any application or service (whether it is ...
, application of open source philosophies to computer security
* Open Source Information System The Open Source Information System (OSIS) is the former name of an American unclassified network serving the U.S. intelligence community with open source intelligence.
Since mid-2006, the content of OSIS is now known as Intelink-U while the netwo ...
, the former name of an American unclassified
Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, ...
network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics
...
serving the U.S. intelligence community
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
with open source intelligence
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (covert and publicly available sources) to produce actionable intelligence. OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforcement, and busi ...
, since mid-2006 the content of OSIS is now known as Intelink
Intelink is a group of secure intranets used by the United States Intelligence Community. The first Intelink network was established in 1994 to take advantage of Internet technologies (though not connected to the public Internet) and services to p ...
-U while the network portion is known as DNI-U A variety of networks operating in special security domains handle classified information in the United States or sensitive but unclassified information, while other specialized networks are reserved specifically for unclassified use by the same ...
* Open-source intelligence
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (covert and publicly available sources) to produce actionable intelligence. OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforcement, and busi ...
, an intelligence gathering discipline based on information collected from open sources (not to be confused with open-source artificial intelligence such as Mycroft (software)
Mycroft is a free and open-source software virtual assistant that uses a natural language user interface. Its code was formerly copyleft, but is now under a permissive license. It is named after a fictional computer from 1966 science fiction no ...
).
Society
The rise of open-source culture in the 20th century resulted from a growing tension between creative practices that involve require access to content that is often copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
ed, and restrictive intellectual property laws and policies governing access to copyrighted content. The two main ways in which intellectual property laws became more restrictive in the 20th century were extensions to the term of copyright (particularly in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
) and penalties, such as those articulated in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
(DMCA), placed on attempts to circumvent anti-piracy technologies.
Although artistic appropriation is often permitted under fair-use doctrines, the complexity and ambiguity of these doctrines creates an atmosphere of uncertainty among cultural practitioners. Also, the protective actions of copyright owners create what some call a "chilling effect
In a legal context, a chilling effect is the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights by the threat of legal sanction. A chilling effect may be caused by legal actions such as the passing of a law, the ...
" among cultural practitioners.
The idea of an "open-source" culture runs parallel to "Free Culture
The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or Free content, open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's origin ...
," but is substantively different. ''Free culture'' is a term derived from the free software movement
The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the s ...
, and in contrast to that vision of culture, proponents of open-source culture (OSC) maintain that some intellectual property law needs to exist to protect cultural producers. Yet they propose a more nuanced position than corporations have traditionally sought. Instead of seeing intellectual property law as an expression of instrumental rules intended to uphold either natural rights or desirable outcomes, an argument for OSC takes into account diverse goods (as in "the Good life") and ends.
Sites such as ccMixter
ccMixter is a produsage community music site that promotes remix culture and makes samples, remixes, and a cappella tracks licensed under Creative Commons available for download and re-use in creative works. Visitors are able to listen to, sam ...
offer up free web space for anyone willing to license their work under a Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
license. The resulting cultural product is then available to download free (generally accessible) to anyone with an Internet connection. Older, analog technologies such as the telephone
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
or television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
have limitations on the kind of interaction users can have.
Through various technologies such as peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...
networks and blogs
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
, cultural producers can take advantage of vast social networks
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
to distribute their products. As opposed to traditional media distribution, redistributing digital media on the Internet can be virtually costless. Technologies such as BitTorrent and Gnutella
Gnutella is a peer-to-peer network protocol. Founded in 2000, it was the first decentralized peer-to-peer network of its kind, leading to other, later networks adopting the model.
In June 2005, Gnutella's population was 1.81 million computer ...
take advantage of various characteristics of the Internet protocol (TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...
) in an attempt to totally decentralize file distribution.
Government
* Open politics
Open-source governance (also known as open governance and open politics) is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles to enable any intere ...
(sometimes known as ''Open-source politics'') is a political process that uses Internet technologies such as blogs, email and polling to provide for a rapid feedback mechanism between political organizations and their supporters. There is also an alternative conception of the term ''Open-source politics'' which relates to the development of public policy under a set of rules and processes similar to the open-source software movement.
* Open-source governance
Open-source governance (also known as open governance and open politics) is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles to enable any intere ...
is similar to open-source politics, but it applies more to the democratic process and promotes the freedom of information.
* Open-source political campaigns refer specifically to political campaigns.
* The South Korean government
The Government of South Korea is the union government of the South Korea, Republic of Korea, created by the Constitution of South Korea as the executive, legislative and judicial authority of the republic. The president acts as the head of sta ...
wants to increase its use of free and open-source software, in order to decrease its dependence on proprietary software solutions. It plans to make open standards a requirement, to allow the government to choose between multiple operating systems and web browsers. Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning is also preparing ten pilots on using open-source software distributions.
Ethics
Open-source ethics is split into two strands:
* Open-source ethics as an ethical school – Charles Ess and David Berry are researching whether ethics can learn anything from an open-source approach. Ess famously even defined the AoIR Research Guidelines as an example of open-source ethics.
* Open-source ethics as a professional body of rules – This is based principally on the computer ethics school, studying the questions of ethics and professionalism in the computer industry in general and software development in particular.
Religion
Irish philosopher Richard Kearney
Richard Kearney (; born 1954) is an Irish philosopher and public intellectual specializing in contemporary continental philosophy. He is the Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy at Boston College and has taught at University College Dublin ...
has used the term "open-source Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
" to refer to the way historical figures such as Mohandas Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...
and Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda (; ; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta (), was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the intro ...
worked upon this ancient tradition.
Media
Open-source journalism
Open-source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com. Although the term was not actually used in the body text of Leonard's article ...
formerly referred to the standard journalistic techniques of news gathering and fact checking, reflecting ''open-source intelligence'', a similar term used in military intelligence circles. Now, ''open-source journalism'' commonly refers to forms of innovative publishing of online journalism
Digital journalism, also known as netizen journalism or online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. What constitutes digital j ...
, rather than the sourcing of news stories by a professional journalist. In the 25 December 2006 issue of TIME magazine this is referred to as user generated content, user created content and listed alongside more traditional open-source projects such as OpenSolaris and Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
.
Blog, Weblogs, or blogs, are another significant platform for open-source culture. Blogs consist of periodic, reverse chronologically ordered posts, using a technology that makes webpages easily updatable with no understanding of design, code, or file transfer required. While corporations, political campaigns and other formal institutions have begun using these tools to distribute information, many blogs are used by individuals for personal expression, political organizing, and socializing. Some, such as LiveJournal or WordPress, utilize open-source software that is open to the public and can be modified by users to fit their own tastes. Whether the code is open or not, this format represents a nimble tool for people to borrow and re-present culture; whereas traditional websites made the illegal reproduction of culture difficult to regulate, the mutability of blogs makes "open sourcing" even more uncontrollable since it allows a larger portion of the population to replicate material more quickly in the public sphere.
Messageboards are another platform for open-source culture. Messageboards (also known as discussion boards or forums), are places online where people with similar interests can congregate and post messages for the community to read and respond to. Messageboards sometimes have moderators who enforce community standards of etiquette such as banning spamming, spammers. Other common board features are private messages (where users can send messages to one another) as well as chat (a way to have a real time conversation online) and image uploading. Some messageboards use phpBB, which is a free open-source package. Where blogs are more about individual expression and tend to revolve around their authors, messageboards are about creating a conversation amongst its users where information can be shared freely and quickly. Messageboards are a way to remove intermediaries from everyday life—for instance, instead of relying on commercials and other forms of advertising, one can ask other users for frank reviews of a product, movie or CD. By removing the cultural middlemen, messageboards help speed the flow of information and exchange of ideas.
OpenDocument is an open format, open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, charts, and presentations. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format such as OpenDocument avoid being Vendor lock-in, locked into a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business, raises their prices, changes their software, or changes their software license, licensing terms to something less favorable.
Open-source film, Open-source movie production is either an open call system in which a changing crew and cast collaborate in movie production, a system in which the result is made available for re-use by others or in which exclusively open-source products are used in the production. The 2006 movie Elephants Dream is said to be the "world's first open movie", created entirely using open-source technology.
An open-source documentary film has a production process allowing the open contributions of archival material footage, and other filmic elements, both in unedited and edited form, similar to crowdsourcing. By doing so, on-line contributors become part of the process of creating the film, helping to influence the editorial and visual material to be used in the documentary, as well as its thematic development. The first open-source documentary film is the non-profit ''WBCN and the American Revolution'', which went into development in 2006, and will examine the role media played in the cultural, social and political changes from 1968 to 1974 through the story of radio station WBCN-FM in Boston. The film is being produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media and the non-profit Center for Independent Documentary. Open Source Cinema is a website to create Basement Tapes, a feature documentary about copyright in the digital age, co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
Open-source film, Open-source film-making refers to a form of film-making that takes a method of idea formation from open-source software, but in this case the 'source' for a filmmaker is raw unedited footage rather than programming code. It can also refer to a method of film-making where the process of creation is 'open' i.e. a disparate group of contributors, at different times contribute to the final piece.
Open-IPTV is IPTV that is not limited to one recording studio, production studio, or cast. Open-IPTV uses the Internet or other means to pool efforts and resources together to create an online community that all contributes to a show.
Education
Within the academic community, there is discussion about expanding what could be called the "intellectual commons" (analogous to the Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
). Proponents of this view have hailed the OpenStax CNX, Connexions Project at Rice University, MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenCourseWare project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, Eugene Thacker's article on "open-source DNA", the "Open Source Cultural Database", Salman Khan (educator), Salman Khan's Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also in ...
and Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
as examples of applying open source outside the realm of computer software.
Open-source curriculum, Open-source curricula are instructional resources whose digital source can be freely used, distributed and modified.
Another strand to the academic community is in the area of research. Many funded research projects produce software as part of their work. Due to the benefits of sharing software openly in scientific endeavours, there is an increasing interest in making the outputs of research projects available under an open-source license. In the UK the Jisc, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has developed a policy on open-source software. JISC also funds a development service called OSS Watch which acts as an advisory service for higher and further education institutions wishing to use, contribute to and develop open-source software.
On 30 March 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, which included $2 billion over four years to fund the TAACCCT, TAACCCT program, which is described as "the largest OER (open education resources) initiative in the world and uniquely focused on creating curricula in partnership with industry for credentials in vocational industry sectors like manufacturing, health, energy, transportation, and IT".
Innovation communities
The principle of sharing pre-dates the open-source movement; for example, the free sharing of information has been institutionalized in the scientific enterprise since at least the 19th century. Open-source principles have always been part of the scientific community. The sociologist Robert K. Merton described the four basic elements of the community—universalism (an international perspective), communalism (sharing information), objectivity (removing one's personal views from the scientific inquiry) and organized skepticism (requirements of proof and review) that describe the (idealised) scientific community.
These principles are, in part, complemented by US law's focus on protecting expression and method but not the ideas themselves. There is also a tradition of publishing research results to the scientific community instead of keeping all such knowledge proprietary. One of the recent initiatives in scientific publishing has been Open access (publishing), open access—the idea that research should be published in such a way that it is free and available to the public. There are currently many open access journals where the information is available free online, however most journals do charge a fee (either to users or libraries for access). The Budapest Open Access Initiative is an international effort with the goal of making all research articles available free on the Internet.
The National Institutes of Health has recently proposed a policy on "Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information". This policy would provide a free, searchable resource of NIH-funded results to the public and with other international repositories six months after its initial publication. The NIH's move is an important one because there is significant amount of public funding in scientific research. Many of the questions have yet to be answered—the balancing of profit vs. public access, and ensuring that desirable standards and incentives do not diminish with a shift to open access.
Benjamin Franklin was an early contributor eventually donating all his inventions including the Franklin stove, bifocals, and the lightning rod to the public domain.
New NGO communities are starting to use the open-source technology as a tool. One example is the Open Source Youth Network started in 2007 in Lisboa by ISCA members.
Open innovation is also a new emerging concept which advocate putting R&D in a common pool. The Eclipse (software), Eclipse platform is openly presenting itself as an Open innovation network.
Arts and recreation
Copyright protection is used in the performing arts and even in athletic activities. Some groups have attempted to remove copyright from such practices.
In 2012, Russian music composer, scientist and Russian Pirate Party member :ru:Complex Numbers (музыкальная группа), Victor Argonov presented detailed raw files of his electronic opera "2032" under free license CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC 3.0 (later relicensed under CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-SA 4.0). This opera was originally composed and published in 2007 by Russian label MC Entertainment as a commercial product, but then the author changed its status to free. In his blog he said that he decided to open raw files (including wav, midi and other used formats) to the public in order to support worldwide pirate actions against SOPA and Personal Information Protection Act, PIPA. Several Internet resources called "2032" the first open-source musical opera in history.
Other related movements
The following are events and applications that have been developed via the Open-source community, open source community, and echo the ideologies of the open source movement.
OpenCourseWare, Open Education Consortium — an organization composed of various colleges that support open source and share some of their material online. This organization, headed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was established to aid in the exchange of open source educational materials.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
— user-generated Internet encyclopedia project, online encyclopedia with sister projects in academic areas, such as Wikiversity — a community dedicated to the creation and exchange of learning materials[Warger, T.
(2002)]
The Open Source Movement
. Retrieved 22 November 2009, from Education Resources Information Center
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...
— prior to the existence of Google Scholar Beta, this was the first supplier of E-book, electronic books and the very first free library project
Synthetic Biology- This new technology is potentially important because it promises to enable cheap, lifesaving new drugs as well as helping to yield biofuels that may help to solve our energy problem. Although synthetic biology has not yet come out of its "lab" stage, it has potential to become industrialized in the near future. In order to industrialize open source science, there are some scientists who are trying to build their own brand of it.
Ideologically-related movements
The open access, open-access movement is a movement that is similar in ideology to the open source movement. Members of this movement maintain that academic material should be readily available to provide help with "future research, assist in teaching and aid in academic purposes." The Open access movement aims to eliminate subscription fees and licensing restrictions of academic materials[Harnad, S. (14 November 2009)]
Zine & Articles: Open Access Movement and Its Implications for the Future of Academic Writing
Retrieved 22 November 2009.
The free-culture movement is a movement that seeks to achieve a culture that engages in collective freedom via freedom of expression, free public access to knowledge and information, full demonstration of creativity and innovation in various arenas and promotion of citizen liberties.[Students For Free Culture. (2009)]
Main Page
Retrieved 22 November 2009, from free culture.org
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
is an organization that "develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation." It encourages the use of protected properties online for research, education, and creative purposes in pursuit of a universal access. Creative Commons provides an infrastructure through a set of copyright licenses and tools that creates a better balance within the realm of "all rights reserved" properties. The Creative Commons license offers a slightly more lenient alternative to "all rights reserved" copyrights for those who do not wish to exclude the use of their material.
The Zeitgeist Movement is an international social movement that advocates a transition into a sustainability, sustainable "resource-based economy" based on collaboration in which monetary incentives are replaced by commons-based ones with everyone sharing economy, having access to everything (from code to products) as in "open source everything". While its activism and events are typically focused on media and education, TZM is a major supporter of open source projects worldwide since they allow for uninhibited advancement of science and technology, independent of constraints posed by institutions of patenting and capitalist investment.
P2P Foundation is an "international organization focused on studying, researching, documenting and promoting Social peer-to-peer processes, peer to peer practices in a very broad sense". Its objectives incorporate those of the open source movement, whose principles are integrated in a larger socio-economic model.
See also
* Access to Knowledge movement (A2K)
* Cooperative
* Decentralization
* Decentralized computing
** Distributed data storage
** Distributed file systems
** Internet privacy
** Privacy software
* Free Beer
Opay Beer, originally known as Vores øl - An open source beer (English: ''Our Beer''), is a brand of beer and the first with an "open"/"free" brand and recipe. The recipe and trademark elements are published under the Creative Commons CC ...
* Free-culture movement
* Free Knowledge Foundation
* Freedom of contract
* OpenBTS
* Open catalogue
* Open Compute Project
The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that shares designs of data center products and best practices among companies, including ARM, Meta, IBM, Wiwynn, Intel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Hewlett ...
* Open Data Institute
* Open education
** Open educational resources
* Open format
* Open Knowledge International
* Open copyright license
* Open publishing
* Open research
* Open-source curriculum (OSC)
* Open-source governance
Open-source governance (also known as open governance and open politics) is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles to enable any intere ...
** Open politics
Open-source governance (also known as open governance and open politics) is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles to enable any intere ...
* Open-source religion
* Open-source unionism
* Open standard
* Paywall
* Peer-to-peer
* Radical transparency
* Sharing economy
* Social collaboration
* Solidarity economy
* Tactical Technology Collective
* Voluntary association
* Voluntaryism or Agorism
Terms based on open source
* Open implementation
* Open security
Open security is the use of open source philosophies and methodologies to approach computer security and other information security challenges. Traditional application security is based on the premise that any application or service (whether it is ...
* Open-source record label
Open-source record labels are record labels that release music under copyleft licenses, that is, licenses that allow free redistribution and may allow free modification of the tracks.
They present free, libre, and open content, and present this a ...
* Open standard
* Shared Source
* Source-available software
Other
* ''Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution'' (book)
* Commons-based peer production
* Digital rights
* Diseconomies of scale
* Free content
* Gift economy
* :wikt:Appendix:Glossary of legal terms in technology, Glossary of legal terms in technology
* Mass collaboration
* Network effect
* Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...
* Openness
* Proprietary software
References
Further reading
*
*
* Karl Fogel
Producing Open Source Software
(How to run a successful free-software project). Free PDF version available.
*
*
(wiki)
* Nettingsmeier, Jörn. "So What? I Don't Hack!
(September 2009). Montréal: Canadian Electroacoustic Community, CEC.
*
*
* Various authors
''eContact! 11.3Logiciels audio " open source " / Open Source for Audio Application''
(September 2009). Montréal: Canadian Electroacoustic Community, CEC.
* Various authors.
Open Source Travel Guide [wiki
/nowiki>]"
''eContact! 11.3Logiciels audio " open source " / Open Source for Audio Application''
(September 2009). Montréal: Canadian Electroacoustic Community, CEC.
*
*
Literature on legal and economic aspects
*
*
*
*
* v. Engelhardt, S. (2008)
"Intellectual Property Rights and Ex-Post Transaction Costs: the Case of Open and Closed Source Software", Jena Economic Research Papers 2008-047
(PDF)
*
* European Commission. (2006)
Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies sector in the EU
Brussels.
*
*
(wiki)
*
*
earlier revision (PDF)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
earlier revision
*
*
*
External links
{{Authority control
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Academic publishing
Business models
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Computer law
Data publishing
Free culture movement
Intellectual property law
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Open content projects
Open educational resources
Open formats
Open hardware electronic devices
Open hardware organizations and companies
Open science
Open-source hardware,
Open-source movement
Scholarly communication
Articles containing video clips