Open-source software

The Open Source Initiative's (OSI) definition is recognized by several governments internationally as the standard or de facto definition. OSI uses The Open Source Definition to determine whether it considers a software license open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens. Perens did not base his writing on the "four freedoms" from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which were only widely available later. Under Perens' definition, open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on the use and modification of the code. It is an explicit "feature" of open source that it puts very few restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user, in order to enable the rapid evolution of the software. According to Feller et al. (2005), the terms "free software" and "open-source software" should be applied to any "software products distributed under terms that allow users" to use, modify, and redistribute the software "in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay the author(s) of the software a royalty or fee for engaging in the listed activities." Despite initially accepting it, Richard Stallman of the FSF now flatly opposes the term "Open Source" being applied to what they refer to as "free software". Although he agrees that the two terms describe "almost the same category of software", Stallman considers equating the terms incorrect and misleading. The FSF considers free software to be a subset of open-source software, and Richard Stallman explained that DRM software, for example, can be developed as open source, despite that it does not give its users freedom (it restricts them), and thus does not qualify as free software. == Open-source software development ==

Development model In his 1997 essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar, open-source influential contributor Eric S. Raymond suggests a model for developing OSS known as the bazaar model. Raymond likens the development of software by traditional methodologies to building a cathedral, with careful isolated work by individuals or small groups. He suggests that all software should be developed using the bazaar style, with differing agendas and approaches. • Users should be treated as co-developers: The users are treated like co-developers and so they should have access to the source code of the software. Furthermore, users are encouraged to submit additions to the software, code fixes for the software, bug reports, documentation, etc. Having more co-developers increases the rate at which the software evolves. Linus's law states that given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow. This means that if many users view the source code, they will eventually find all bugs and suggest how to fix them. Some users have advanced programming skills, and furthermore, each user's machine provides an additional testing environment. This new testing environment offers the ability to find and fix a new bug. Some open-source projects have nightly builds where integration is done automatically. It often fosters developer loyalty, as contributors feel a greater sense of participation and ownership in the development process and the end product. Moreover, lower costs of marketing and logistical services are needed for OSS. The OSS development approach has been known to some to help produce reliable, high quality software quickly and inexpensively. Open source development offers the potential to quicken innovation and create social value. In France, for instance, a policy that incentivized government to favor free open-source software increased to nearly 600,000 OSS contributions per year, generating social value by increasing the quantity and quality of open-source software. This policy also led to an estimated increase of up to 18% of tech startups and a 14% increase in the number of people employed in the IT sector. OSS can be highly reliable when it has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software. OSS is flexible as modular systems allow programmers to build custom interfaces or add new abilities to it. The mix of divergent perspectives, corporate objectives, and personal goals allows innovation. Moreover, free software can be developed in accordance with purely technical requirements. It does not require thinking about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of the software. Commercial pressures make traditional software developers pay more attention to customers' requirements than to security requirements, since such features are somewhat invisible to the customer. Development tools In open-source software development, tools are used to support the development of the product and the development process itself. Version control systems such as Centralized Version control system (CVCS) and the distributed version control system (DVCS) are examples of tools, often open source, that help manage the source code files and the changes to those files for a software project in order to foster collaboration. CVCS are centralized with a central repository while DVCS are decentralized and have a local repository for every user. Concurrent Versions System (CVS) and later Subversion (SVN) are examples of CVCS, whereas Git is a DVCS and the most widely used version control software. The repositories are hosted and published on source-code-hosting facilities such as GitHub or Gitlab. Open-source projects use utilities such as issue trackers to organize open-source software development. Commonly used bug trackers include Bugzilla and Redmine. Tools such as mailing lists and IRC provide means of coordination and discussion of bugs among developers. Project web pages, wiki pages, roadmap lists and newsgroups allow for the distribution of project information that focuses on end users. == Opportunities for participation ==

Contributing The basic roles OSS participants can fall into multiple categories, beginning with leadership at the center of the project who have control over its execution. Next are the core contributors with a great deal of experience and authority in the project who may guide the other contributors. Non-core contributors have less experience and authority, but regularly contribute and are vital to the project's development. New contributors are the least experienced but with mentorship and guidance can become regular contributors. Organizations like the Sovereign Tech Fund is able to contribute to millions to supporting the tools the German Government uses. The National Science Foundation established a Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program to support open source innovation. Industry participation The adoption of open-source software by industry is increasing over time. OSS is popular in several industries such as telecommunications, aerospace, healthcare, and media & entertainment due to the benefits it provides. Adoption of OSS is more likely in larger organizations and is dependent on the company's IT usage, operating efficiencies, and the productivity of employees. Industries are likely to use OSS due to back-office functionality, sales support, research and development, software features, quick deployment, portability across platforms and avoidance of commercial license management. Additionally, lower cost for hardware and ownership are also important benefits. Prominent organizations Organizations that contribute to the development and expansions of free and open-source software movements exist all over the world. These organizations are dedicated to goals such as teaching and spreading technology. As listed by a former vice president of the Open Source Initiative, some American organizations include the Free Software Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy, the Open Source Initiative and Software in the Public Interest. Within Europe some notable organizations are Free Software Foundation Europe, open-source projects EU (OSP) and OpenForum Europe (OFE). One Australian organization is Linux Australia while Asia has Open source Asia and FOSSAsia. Free and open source software for Africa (FOSSFA) and OpenAfrica are African organizations and Central and South Asia has such organizations as FLISOL and GRUP de usuarios de software libre Peru. Outside of these, many more organizations dedicated to the advancement of open-source software exist. == Legal and economic issues ==

Licensing FOSS products are generally licensed under two types of licenses: permissive licensing and copyleft licensing. Both of these types of licenses are different than proprietary licensing in that they can allow more users access to the software and allow for the creation of derivative works as specified by the terms of the specific license, as each license has its own rules. Permissive licenses allow recipients of the software to implement the author's copyright rights without having to use the same license for distribution. Examples of this type of license include the BSD, MIT, and Apache licenses. Copyleft licenses are different in that they require recipients to use the same license for at least some parts of the distribution of their works. Strong copyleft licenses require all derivative works to use the same license while weak copyleft licenses require the use of the same license only under certain conditions. Examples of this type of license include the GNU family of licenses, and the MPL and EPL licenses. The similarities between these two categories of licensing include that they provide a broad grant of copyright rights, require that recipients preserve copyright notices, and that a copy of the license is provided to recipients with the code. One important legal precedent for open-source software was created in 2008, when the Jacobson v Katzer case enforced terms of the Artistic license, including attribution and identification of modifications. The ruling of this case cemented enforcement under copyright law when the conditions of the license were not followed. Because of the similarity of the Artistic license to other open-source software licenses, the ruling created a precedent that applied widely. The economic model of open-source software can be explained as developers contribute work to projects, creating public benefits. Developers choose projects based on the perceived benefits or costs, such as improved reputation or value of the project. The motivations of developers can come from many different places and reasons, but the important takeaway is that money is not the only or even most important incentivization. However, an issue to be considered is cybersecurity. While accidental vulnerabilities are possible, so are attacks by outside agents. Because of these fears, governmental interest in contributing to the governance of software has become more prominent. However, these are the broad strokes of the issue, with each country having their own specific politicized interactions with open-source software and their goals for its implementation. For example, the United States has focused on national security in regard to open-source software implementation due to the perceived threat of the increase of open-source software activity in countries like China and Russia, with the Department of Defense considering multiple criteria for using OSS. These criteria include whether it comes from and is maintained by trusted sources, whether it will continue to be maintained, if there are dependencies on sub-components in the software, component security and integrity, and foreign governmental influence. Another issue for governments in regard to open source is their investments in technologies such as operating systems, semiconductors, cloud, and artificial intelligence. These technologies all have implications for global cooperation, again opening up security issues and political consequences. Many countries have to balance technological innovation with technological dependence in these partnerships. For example, after China's open-source dependent company Huawei was prevented from using Google's Android system in 2019, they began to create their own alternative operating system: Harmony OS. Germany recently established a Sovereign Tech Fund, to help support the governance and maintenance of the software that they use. == Open software movement ==

History In the early days of computing, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s, programmers and developers commonly shared software to learn from one another and advance the field. Early systems such as Unix even provided users with access to their source code, allowing collaboration and modification. However, with the rise of the commercial software industry in the 1970s and 1980s, this culture of open sharing began to decline as proprietary models became dominant. Despite this shift, academic and research institutions continued to promote collaborative software development practices. In response, the open-source movement was born out of the work of skilled programmer enthusiasts, widely referred to as hackers or hacker culture. One of these enthusiasts, Richard Stallman, was a driving force behind the free software movement, which would later allow for the open-source movement. In 1984, he resigned from MIT to create a free operating system, GNU, after the programmer culture in his lab was stifled by proprietary software preventing source code from being shared and improved upon. GNU was UNIX compatible, meaning that the programmer enthusiasts would still be familiar with how it worked. However, it quickly became apparent that there was some confusion with the label Stallman had chosen of free software, which he described as free as in free speech, not free beer, referring to the meaning of free as freedom rather than price. He later expanded this concept of freedom to the four essential freedoms. Through GNU, open-source norms of incorporating others' source code, community bug fixes and suggestions of code for new features appeared. In 1985, Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to promote changes in software and to help write GNU. In order to prevent his work from being used in proprietary software, Stallman created the concept of copyleft, which allowed the use of his work by anyone, but under specific terms. To do this, he created the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) in 1989, which was updated in 1991. The operating system is now usually referred to as Linux. As free software developed, the Free Software Foundation began to look how to bring free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. It was concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies and they needed a way to rebrand the free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code. The OSI definition differed from the free software definition in that it allows the inclusion of proprietary software and allows more liberties in its licensing. Some, such as Stallman, agree more with the original concept of free software as a result because it takes a strong moral stance against proprietary software, though there is much overlap between the two movements in terms of the operation of the software. Future The future of the open source software community, and the free software community by extension, has become successful if not confused about what it stands for. For example, Android and Ubuntu are examples milestones of success in the open source software rise to prominence from the sidelines of technological innovation as it existed in the early 2000s. However, some in the community consider them failures in their representation of OSS due to issues such as the downplaying of the OSS center of Android by Google and its partners, the use of an Apache license that allowed forking and resulted in a loss of opportunities for collaboration within Android, the prioritization of convenience over freedom in Ubuntu, and features within Ubuntu that track users for marketing purposes. The use of OSS has become more common in business with 78% of companies reporting that they run all or part of their operations on FOSS. The popularity of OSS has risen to the point that Microsoft, a once detractor of OSS, has included its use in their systems. However, this success has raised concerns that will determine the future of OSS as the community must answer questions such as what OSS is, what should it be, and what should be done to protect it, if it even needs protecting. All in all, while the free and open source revolution has slowed to a perceived equilibrium in the market place, that does not mean it is over as many theoretical discussions must take place to determine its future. == Comparisons with other software licensing/development models ==

Closed source / proprietary software Open source software differs from proprietary software in that it is publicly available, the license requires no fees, modifications and distributions are allowed under license specifications. All of this works to prevent a monopoly on any OSS product, which is a goal of proprietary software. Proprietary software limits their customers' choices to either committing to using that software, upgrading it or switching to other software, forcing customers to have their software preferences impacted by their monetary cost. The ideal case scenario for the proprietary software vendor would be a lock-in, where the customer does not or cannot switch software due to these costs and continues to buy products from that vendor. Within proprietary software, bug fixes can only be provided by the vendor, moving platforms requires another purchase and the existence of the product relies on the vendor, who can discontinue it at any point. Richard Stallman, leader of the Free software movement and member of the free software foundation opposes the term open source being applied to what they refer to as free software. Although he agrees that the two terms describe almost the same category of software, Stallman considers equating the terms incorrect and misleading. Nevertheless, there is significant overlap between open source software and free software. Source-available software Software can be distributed with source code, which is a code that is readable. Software is source available when this source code is available to be seen. However to be source available or FOSS, the source code does not need to be accessible to all, just the users of that software. While all FOSS software is source available because this is a requirement made by the Open Source Definition, not all source available software is FOSS. For example, if the software does not meet other aspects of the Open Source Definition such as permitted modification or redistribution, even if the source code is available, the software is not FOSS. Open-sourcing A recent trend within software companies is open-sourcing, or transitioning their previous proprietary software into open-source software through releasing it under an open-source license. Examples of companies who have done this are Google, Microsoft and Apple. Additionally, open-sourcing can refer to programming open-source software or installing open-source software. Open-sourcing can be beneficial in multiple ways, such as attracting more external contributors who bring new perspectives and problem solving capabilities. The downsides of open-sourcing include the work that has to be done to maintaining the new community, such as making the base code easily understandable, setting up communication channels for new developers and creating documentation to allow new developers to easily join. However, a review of several open-sourced projects found that although a newly open-sourced project attracts many newcomers, a great amount are likely to soon leave the project and their forks are also likely to not be impactful. Other Other concepts that may share some similarities to open source are shareware, public domain software, freeware, and software viewers/readers that are freely available but do not provide source code. However, these differ from open source software in access to source code, licensing, copyright and fees. == Society and culture ==

Demographics Despite being able to collaborate internationally, open source software contributors were found to mostly be located in large clusters such as Silicon Valley that largely collaborate within themselves. Possible reasons for this phenomenon may be that the OSS contributor demographic largely works in software, meaning that the OSS geographic location is closely related to that dispersion and collaborations could be encouraged through work and social networks. Code acceptance can be impacted by status within these social network clusters, creating unfair predispositions in code acceptance based on location. Barriers to international collaboration also include linguistic or cultural differences. Furthermore, each country has been shown to have a higher acceptance rate for code from contributors within their country except India, indicating a bias for culturally similar collaborators. In 2002, only 1.5% of international open-source software developers were women, while women made up 28% of tech industry roles, demonstrating their low representation in the software field. Despite OSS contributions having no prerequisites, this gender bias may continue to exist due to the common belief of contributors that gender should not matter, and the quality of code should be the only consideration for code acceptance, preventing the community from addressing the systemic disparities in female representation. Motivations Contributors participate in open-source software (OSS) projects for a variety of reasons. Participation can provide practical experience in areas such as coding, issue tracking, version control, communication, and collaboration. In addition to technical skills, contributors may become familiar with industry practices and emerging technologies. Because most OSS projects are volunteer-based, participation does not involve formal employment arrangements, though contributors may develop professional reputations through their work. Disparities Even though programming was originally seen as a female profession, there remains a large gap in computing. Social identity tends to be a large concern as women in the tech industry face insecurity about attracting unwanted male attention and harassment or being unfeminine in their technology knowledge, having a large impact on confidence. Some male tech participants make clear that they believe women fitting in within the culture is impossible, furthering the insecurity for women and their place in the tech industry. Additionally, even in a voluntary contribution environment like open source software, women tend to end up doing the less technical aspects of projects, such as manual testing or documentation despite women and men showing the same productivity in OSS contributions. Explicit biases include longer feedback time, more scrutinization of code and lower acceptance rate of code. Specifically in the open-source software community, women report that sexually offensive language is common and the women's identity as female is given more attention that as an OSS contributor. Bias is hard to address due to the belief that gender should not matter, with most contributors feeling that women getting special treatment is unfair and success should be dependent on skill, preventing any changes to be more inclusive. == Adoption and application ==

Key projects Open source software projects are built and maintained by a network of programmers, who may often be volunteers, and are widely used in free as well as commercial products. • Unix: Unix is an operating system created by AT&T that began as a precursor to open source software in that the free and open-source software revolution began when developers began trying to create operating systems without Unix code. Unix was created in the 1960s, before the commercialization of software and before the concept of open source software was necessary, therefore it was not considered a true open source software project. It started as a research project before being commercialized in the mid 1980s. Before its commercialization, it represented many of the ideals held by the Free and Open source software revolution, including the decentralized collaboration of global users, rolling releases and a community culture of distaste towards proprietary software. However, it is often misapplied to other areas that have different and competing principles, which overlap only partially. ==Value==

More than 90 percent of companies use open-source software as a component of their proprietary software. The decision to use open-source software, or even engage with open-source projects to improve existing open-source software, is typically a pragmatic business decision. When proprietary software is in direct competition with an open-source alternative, research has found conflicting results on the effect of the competition on the proprietary product's price and quality. For decades, some companies have made servicing of an open-source software product for enterprise users their business model. These companies control an open-source software product, and instead of charging for licensing or use, charge for improvements, integration, and other servicing. Software as a service (SaaS) products based on open-source components are increasingly common. Open-source software is preferred for scientific applications, because it increases transparency and aids in the validation and acceptance of scientific results. ==See also==