Benefits over proprietary software Personal control, customizability and freedom Users of FOSS benefit from the
Four Essential Freedoms to make unrestricted use of, and to study, copy, modify, and redistribute such software with or without modification. If they would like to change the functionality of software they can bring about changes to the code and, if they wish, distribute such modified versions of the software or often − depending on the software's
decision making model and its other users − even push or request such changes to be made via updates to the original software. Instead of having to trust software vendors, users of FOSS can inspect and verify the source code themselves and can put trust on a community of volunteers and users.
Low costs or no costs FOSS is often free of charge although donations are often encouraged. This also allows users to better test and compare software.
Bugs and missing features While FOSS can be superior to proprietary equivalents in terms of software features and stability, in many cases it has more unfixed bugs and missing features when compared to similar commercial software. This varies per case, and usually depends on the level of interest in a particular project. However, unlike close-sourced software, improvements can be made by anyone who has the motivation, time and skill to do so. A common obstacle in FOSS development is the lack of access to some common official standards, due to costly
royalties or required
non-disclosure agreements (e.g., for the
DVD-Video format).
Less guarantee of development There is often less certainty of FOSS projects gaining the required resources and participation for continued development than commercial software backed by companies. However, companies also often abolish projects for being unprofitable, yet large companies may rely on, and hence co-develop, open source software.
Adoption by governments Adoption by supranational unions and international organizations European Union In 2017, the
European Commission stated that "EU institutions should become open source software users themselves, even more than they already are" and listed open source software as one of the nine key drivers of innovation, together with
big data, mobility,
cloud computing and the
internet of things. In 2020, the
European Commission adopted its
Open Source Strategy 2020-2023, including encouraging sharing and reuse of software and publishing Commission's source code as key objectives. Among concrete actions there is also to set up an Open Source Programme Office in 2020 and in 2022 it launched its own FOSS repository code.europa.eu. In 2021, the
Commission Decision on the open source licensing and reuse of Commission software (2021/C 495 I/01) was adopted, under which, as a general principle, the European Commission may release software under
EUPL or another FOSS license, if more appropriate. There are exceptions though. In May 2022, the
Expert group on the Interoperability of European Public Services came published 27 recommendations to strengthen the interoperability of public administrations across the EU. These recommendations are to be taken into account later in the same year in Commission's proposal of the
"Interoperable Europe Act". ==Production== Open-source software development (OSSD) is the process by which open-source software is developed. The software's source code is publicly available to be used, modified, and enhanced. Notable examples of open-source software products are Mozilla Firefox, Android, and VLC media player. The development process is typically different from traditional methods such as
Waterfall. Instead favoring early releases and community involvement. Open-source software developers will typically use methods such as E-mail, Wikis, web forums, and instant messaging services for communication, as individuals are not typically working in close proximity to one another. Version control systems such as Git are utilized to make code collaboration easier. However, as technology and legal landscapes evolved, particularly with the rise of
Digital Rights Management (DRM) and software patents, some developers and legal experts argued that GPLv2 did not adequately protect user freedoms in newer contexts. This led to the development of GPLv3, which sought to address these concerns. While copyright is the primary legal mechanism that FOSS authors use to ensure license compliance for their software, other mechanisms such as legislation, patents, and trademarks have implications as well. In response to legal issues with patents and the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Free Software Foundation released
version 3 of its GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3) in 2007 that explicitly addressed the DMCA and patent rights. One of the key issues GPLv3 aimed to address was a practice known as
Tivoization, named after the company TiVo, which used GPL-covered software but implemented hardware restrictions that prevented users from running modified versions of the software. This was seen by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as a direct violation of software freedom, prompting GPLv3 to include language explicitly forbidding such restrictions. Additionally, GPLv3 introduced clauses to protect users against aggressive enforcement of software patents and reinforced the idea that users should retain control over the software they use. After the development of the GNU GPLv3 in 2007, the FSF (as the copyright holder of many pieces of the GNU system) updated many of the GNU programs' licenses from GPLv2 to GPLv3. On the other hand, the adoption of the new GPL version was heavily discussed in the FOSS ecosystem, several projects decided against upgrading to GPLv3. For instance the
Linux kernel, the
BusyBox project,
AdvFS,
Blender, and the
VLC media player decided against adopting the GPLv3.
Apple, a user of
GCC and a heavy user of both
DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its
Xcode IDE from GCC to
Clang, which is another FOSS compiler but is under a
permissive license.
LWN speculated that Apple was motivated partly by a desire to avoid GPLv3. The
Samba project also switched to GPLv3, so Apple replaced
Samba in their software suite by a closed-source, proprietary software alternative. The controversy with GPLv3 mirrored a more general philosophical split in the open source community: whether people should hold licenses that aggressively defend user freedoms (as with copyleft) or take a more permissive, collaborative yet ambiguous approach. Supporters applauded GPLv3 for fortifying protections against restrictions imposed by hardware and patent threats, The fallout helped to raise the acceptance of permissive licenses like the MIT and Apache licenses, especially by commercial software developers.
Skewed prioritization, ineffectiveness and egoism of developers Leemhuis criticizes the
priorities of skilled developers who − instead of fixing issues in already popular open-source applications and desktop environments − create new, mostly redundant software to gain fame and fortune. He also criticizes notebook manufacturers for optimizing their own products only privately or creating
workarounds instead of helping fix the actual causes of the many issues with Linux on notebooks such as the unnecessary power consumption. Oracle in turn purchased Sun in January 2010, acquiring their copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Thus, Oracle became the owner of both the most popular proprietary database and the most popular open-source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open-source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community. Partly in response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community
forked the project into new
database systems outside of Oracle's control. These include
MariaDB,
Percona, and
Drizzle. All of these have distinct names; they are distinct projects and cannot use the trademarked name MySQL.
Legal cases Oracle v. Google In August 2010,
Oracle sued
Google, claiming that its use of
Java in
Android infringed on Oracle's copyrights and patents. In May 2012, the trial judge determined that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents and ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable. The jury found that Google infringed a small number of copied files, but the parties
stipulated that Google would pay no damages. Oracle appealed to the
Federal Circuit, and Google filed a
cross-appeal on the literal copying claim. == Economics ==