Open source is a development methodology,^[1] which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge). Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. A Strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, most often "winning Business operations are those ongoing recurring activities involved in the running of a business for the purpose of producing value for the stakeholders They are contrasted Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, which provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks

The open source model of operation and decision making allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, and differs from the more closed, centralized models of development. Decision making can be regarded as an outcome of mental processes ( cognitive process) leading to the selection of a course of action among several alternatives ^[2] The principles and practices are commonly applied to the development of source code for software that is made available for public collaboration, and it is usually released as open-source software. In Computer science, source code (commonly just source or code) is any sequence of statements or declarations written in some Human-readable Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together toward an intersection of common goals — for example an intellectual Open source software (OSS began as a marketing campaign for Free software.

Contents 1 Society and culture 1.1 Government 1.2 Ethics 1.3 Media 1.4 Education 1.5 Fitness 1.6 Innovation communities 1.7 Arts and recreation 2 The Open Source Definition 3 Proliferation of the term 4 Perens' principles 5 Non-software use 6 History 7 Widely-used open source products 8 Criticism 9 Business models 10 See also 10.1 Lists 10.2 Terms based on open source 10.3 Other 11 References 12 Further reading 13 Literature on legal and economic aspects 14 External links

Society and culture

Open source culture is the creative practice of appropriation and free sharing of found and created content. Examples include collage, found footage film, music, and appropriation art. A collage (From the coller to glue is a work of formal art primarily in the Visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms thus creating a new whole Found footage is a filmmaking term which describes a method of compiling films partly or entirely of Footage which has not been created by the filmmaker and changing its meaning Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. To appropriate something involves taking possession of it In the Visual arts, the term appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed Open source culture is one in which fixations, works entitled to copyright protection, are made generally available. Participants in the culture can modify those products and redistribute them back into the community or other organizations.

The rise of open-source culture in the 20th century resulted from a growing tension between creative practices that involve appropriation, and therefore require access to content that is often copyrighted, and increasingly restrictive intellectual property laws and policies governing access to copyrighted content. Copyright is a legal concept enacted by Governments, giving the creator of an original work of authorship Exclusive rights to control its distribution usually for 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) and penalties, such as those articulated in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), placed on attempts to circumvent anti-piracy technologies. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA is a United States Copyright Law which implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property

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. Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders such as use for Also, the protective actions of copyright owners create what some call a "chilling effect" among cultural practitioners.

In the late 20th century, cultural practitioners began to adopt the intellectual property licensing techniques of free software and open-source software to make their work more freely available to others, including the Creative Commons. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified Open source software (OSS began as a marketing campaign for Free software. Creative Commons (CC is a Non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share

The idea of an "open source" culture runs parallel to "Free Culture," but is substantively different. The free culture movement is a Social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify Creative works, using the Internet as well as other Free culture is a term derived from the free software movement, and in contrast to that vision of culture, proponents of OSC maintain that some intellectual property law needs to exist to protect cultural producers. The free software movement (also known as open source movement, free and open source software movement and abbreviated FSM OSM or FOSSM) is a relatively 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.

One way of achieving the goal of making the fixations of cultural work generally available is to maximally utilize technology and digital media. Digital media (as opposed to analog media) usually refers to Electronic media that work on digital Codes. As predicted by Moore's law, the cost of digital media and storage plummeted in the late 20th Century. Moore's law describes an important trend in the History of computer hardware. The twentieth century of the Common Era began on Consequently, the marginal cost of digitally duplicating anything capable of being transmitted via digital media dropped to near zero. In Economics and Finance, marginal cost is the change in Total cost that arises when the quantity produced changes by one unit Combined with an explosive growth in personal computer and technology ownership, the result is an increase in general population's access to digital media. A personal computer ( PC) is any Computer whose original sales price size and capabilities make it useful for individuals and which is intended to be operated This phenomenon facilitated growth in open source culture because it allowed for rapid and inexpensive duplication and distribution of culture. Where the access to the majority of culture produced prior to the advent of digital media was limited by other constraints of proprietary and potentially "open" mediums, digital media is the latest technology with the potential to increase access to cultural products. Artists and users who choose to distribute their work digitally face none of the physical limitations that traditional cultural producers have been typically faced with. Accordingly, the audience of an open source culture faces little physical cost in acquiring digital media.

Open source culture precedes Richard Stallman's codification of the concept with the creation of the Free Software Foundation. Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16 1953 often abbreviated " rms " is an American software freedom activist The Free Software Foundation ( FSF) is a Non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the Free software movement As the public began to communicate through Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) like FidoNet, places like Sourcery Systems BBS were dedicated to providing source code to Public Domain, Shareware and Freeware programs. A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a Computer system running software that allows users to connect and login to The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone The term shareware, popularized by Bob Wallace, refers to Copyrighted commercial Software that is Distributed without payment on a trial Freeware is computer Software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee

Essentially born out of a desire for increased general access to digital media, the Internet is open source culture's most valuable asset. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks It is questionable whether the goals of an open source culture could be achieved without the Internet. The global network not only fosters an environment where culture can be generally accessible, but also allows for easy and inexpensive redistribution of culture back into various communities. Some reasons for this are as follows.

First, the Internet allows even greater access to inexpensive digital media and storage. Instead of users being limited to their own facilities and resources, they are granted access to a vast network of facilities and resources, some for free. Sites such as Archive.org offer up free web space for anyone willing to license their work under a Creative Commons license. The Internet Archive ( IA) is a Nonprofit organization dedicated to maintaining an on-line Library and archive of Web and Creative Commons (CC is a Non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share The resulting cultural product is then available to download for free (generally accessible) to anyone with an Internet connection.

Second, users are granted unprecedented access to each other. Older analog technologies such as the telephone or television have limitations on the kind of interaction users can have. Basic principle A traditional landline telephone system also known as "plain old telephone service" (POTS, commonly handles both signaling and audio information Television ( TV) is a widely used Telecommunication medium for sending ( Broadcasting) and receiving moving Images, either monochromatic In the case of television there is little, if any interaction between users participating on the network. And in the case of the telephone, users rarely interact with any more than a couple of their known peers. On the Internet, however, users have the potential to access and meet millions of their peers. This aspect of the Internet facilitates the modification of culture as users are able to collaborate and communicate with each other across international and cultural boundaries. The speed in which digital media travels on the Internet in turn facilitates the redistribution of culture.

Through various technologies such as peer-to-peer networks and blogs, cultural producers can take advantage of vast social networks in order to distribute their products. For other uses of the term see Peer-to-peer (disambiguation For peer-to-peer networks used for file sharing see File sharing A blog (a contraction of the term " Web log " is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary descriptions of A social network is a Social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency such as As opposed to traditional media distribution, redistributing digital media on the Internet can be virtually costless. Technologies such as BitTorrent and Gnutella take advantage of various characteristics of the Internet protocol (TCP/IP) in an attempt to totally decentralize file distribution. Gnutella (nʊˈtɛlə with a silent g, or alternatively /gnʊˈtɛlə/ is a File sharing network The Internet Protocol Suite (commonly TCP/IP) is the set of Communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks

Government

• Open source government — primarily refers to use of open source software technologies in traditional government organizations and government operations such as voting. Open source governance is a Political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the Open source and Open content movements to
• Open politics (sometimes known as Open source politics) — is a term used to describe 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. The open politics theory combines aspects of the Free software and Open content movements promoting Decision making methods claimed to be more open 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 — is similar to open source politics, but it applies more to the democratic process and promotes the freedom of information. Open source governance is a Political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the Open source and Open content movements to

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. ^[3]
• 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. ^[4]

Media

Open source journalism — referred to the standard journalistic techniques of news gathering and fact checking, and reflected a similar term that was in use from 1992 in military intelligence circles, open source intelligence. 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 This article is a subset article in a series under Intelligence collection management. It is now commonly used to describe forms of innovative publishing of online journalism, rather than the sourcing of news stories by a professional journalist. Online journalism is defined as the Reporting of facts produced and distributed via the Internet. In the Dec 25, 2006 issue of TIME magazine this is referred to as user created content and listed alongside more traditional open source projects such as OpenSolaris and Linux. User generated content ( UGC, often hyphenated also known as Consumer Generated Media ( CGM) or User created Content ( UCC) refers OpenSolaris is an Open source project created by Sun Microsystems to build a developer community around Solaris Operating System technology Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks

Weblogs, or blogs, are another significant platform for open source culture. A blog (a contraction of the term " Web log " is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary descriptions of 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. File transfer is a generic term for the act of transmitting files over a Computer network or the Internet. 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. LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ) is a Virtual community where Internet users can keep a Blog, Journal or Diary. WordPress is an Open source blog publishing application. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi 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. An, or message board, is a Bulletin board system in the form of a discussion site 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 users who are spammers. Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages 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. phpBB is a popular Internet forum package written in the PHP programming language 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 document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, charts, and presentations. The OpenDocument format (ODF is a File format for electronic office documents such as Spreadsheets Charts presentations and An open format is a published specification for storing digital data usually maintained by a Standards organization, which basically can be used and implemented by anyone A document file format is a text or binary file format for storing Documents on a storage media, especially for use by Computers A spreadsheet is a Computer application that simulates a paper worksheet Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format such as OpenDocument avoid being locked in to 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 licensing terms to something less favorable. In Economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products A software license (or software licence in commonwealth usage is a Legal instrument governing the usage or redistribution of copyright protected software

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 end result is made available for re-use by others or in which exclusively open source products are used in the production. An open content film (or open source film) is a Movie or Film produced using Open source software and open source methodology The 2006 movie Elephants Dream is said to be the "world's first open movie"^[5], created entirely using open source technology. Elephants Dream is a computer-generated Short film that was produced almost completely using Open source software except for the modular sound Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge

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. In Film and Video, footage is the raw unedited material as it had been originally recorded by video Camera, which usually must be edited to 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 to go into production "The American Revolution" ^[6]," which will examine the role that WBCN-FM in Boston played in the cultural, social and political changes locally and nationally from 1968 to 1974, is being produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media and the non-profit The Fund for Independent Media. 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 Filmmaking refers to a form of filmmaking that takes a method of idea formation from open source software, but in this case the 'source' for a film maker is raw unedited footage rather than programming code. An open content film (or open source film) is a Movie or Film produced using Open source software and open source methodology It can also refer to a method of filmmaking 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. IPTV ( Internet Protocol Television) is a system where a Digital television service is delivered using Internet Protocol over a network infrastructure which 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 a Non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share Proponents of this view have hailed the Connexions Project at Rice University, OpenCourseWare project at MIT, Eugene Thacker's article on "Open Source DNA", the "Open Source Cultural Database", openwebschool, and Wikipedia as examples of applying open source outside the realm of computer software. Connexions is a global repository of educational content that can be adapted and updated by new authors William Marsh Rice University (commonly called Rice University and opened in 1912 as The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters Science and Art MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate - and ***************************************************************************************** * *

Open source curricula are instructional resources whose digital source can be freely used, distributed and modified. An open source curriculum (OSC is an online instructional resource that 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. There is an increasing interest in making the outputs of such projects available under an open source license. In the UK the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has developed a policy on open source software. The Joint Information Systems Committee ( JISC) supports United Kingdom post-16 and Higher education and Research by providing leadership in the 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. OSS Watch is the United Kingdom 's advisory service for issues relating to free and Open source software in the Further Education and Higher Education

Fitness

CrossFit is an open source strength and conditioning fitness movement. CrossFit is a strength and conditioning fitness methodology Its stated goal is to create "the quintessential athlete equal parts gymnast Olympic Weightlifter Its founder freely shares his methodology and publishes a website with gigabytes of data, information and interactive forums. CrossFit athletes and instructors share their modifications, adaptations and enhancements. The result has been new CrossFit "flavors" including: CrossFit for Kids, CrossFit for Seniors, CrossFit in the Park, and CrossFit for Combat Athletes. Web posts and CrossFit Journal articles often focus on how to modify the program for specific groups who have only limited access to equipment. Examples include high school track athletes and soldiers in Iraq. CrossFit athletes also post YouTube videos and invite critiques of their form. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload view and share Video clips YouTube was created in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees ^[7]

Innovation communities

The principle of sharing predates 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), communism (sharing information), disinterestedness (removing one's personal views from the scientific inquiry) and organized skepticism (requirements of proof and review) that accurately describe the scientific community today. Robert King Merton ( July 4, 1910 &ndash February 23, 2003, born Meyer R 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 - the idea that research should be published in such a way that it is free and available to the public. Open access ( OA) is free immediate permanent full-text Online access for any user web-wide to digital scientific and scholarly material primarily There are currently many open access journals where the information is available for 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 for free on the Internet. The National Institutes of Health has recently proposed a policy on "Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information. "NIH" redirects here For other meanings of NIH see NIH (disambiguation. " 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.

Farmavita. Net - Community of Pharmaceuticals Executives have recently proposed new business model of Open Source Pharmaceuticals ^[8]. The project is targeted to development and sharing of know-how for manufacture of essential and life saving medicines. It is mainly dedicated to the countries with less developed economies where local pharmaceutical research and development resources are insufficient for national needs. It will be limited to generic medicines with established use. By the definition, medicinal product have a “well-established use” if is used for at least 15 years, with recognized efficacy and an acceptable level of safety. In that event, the expensive clinical test and trial results could be replaced by appropriate scientific literature.

Benjamin Franklin was an early contributor eventually donating all his inventions including the Franklin stove, bifocals and the lightning rod to the public domain after successfully profiting off their sales and patents. Benjamin Franklin ( April 17 1790 was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. The Franklin stove (named after its inventor Benjamin Franklin) is a metal-lined Fireplace with Baffles in the rear to improve the airflow providing more Bifocals are Eyeglasses whose Corrective lenses each contain regions with two distinct Optical powers Bifocals are most commonly prescribed to people with A lightning rod (USA or lightning conductor (UK is a single component in a Lightning protection system.

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^[9].

Open innovation is also a new emerging concept which advocate putting R&D in a common pool, the Eclipse platform is openly presenting itself as an Open innovation network ^[10]

Arts and recreation

Copyright protection is used in the performing arts and even in athletic activities. Open Innovation is a term promoted by Henry Chesbrough, a professor and executive director at the Center for Open Innovation at Berkeley. In Computing, Eclipse is a Software platform comprising extensible Application frameworks tools and a Runtime library for Software The performing arts are those forms of Art which differ from the Plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own Body, Face and presence Some groups have attempted to remove copyright from such practices. ^[11]

The Open Source Definition

Main article: Open Source Definition

The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative to determine whether or not a software license can be considered open source. The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative to determine whether or not a software license can be considered open source. The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting Open-source software. Open source software (OSS began as a marketing campaign for Free software. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens. The Debian Free Software Guidelines ( DFSG) is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a Free software license Bruce Perens is a Computer programmer and advocate in the Open source community. ^[12]

Proliferation of the term

While the term applied originally only to the source code of software,^[13] it is now being applied to many other areas such as open source ecology, a movement to decentralize technologies so that any human can use them. However, it is often misapplied to other areas which have different and competing principles, which overlap only partially.

Opponents of the spread of the label “open source,” including Richard Stallman, argue that the requirements and restrictions ensure the continuation of the effort, and resist attempts to redefine the labels. Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16 1953 often abbreviated " rms " is an American software freedom activist He argues also that most supporters of open source are actually supporters of much more equitable agreements and support re-integration of derived works and that most contributors do not intend to release their work to others who can extend it, hide the extensions, patent those very extensions, and demand royalties or restrict the use of all other users—all while not violating the open source principles with respect to the initial code they acquired.

Perens' principles

See The Open Source Definition for the exact operational definition and examples of licenses that satisfy, and do not satisfy, those principles. Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge

Under Perens' definition, open source describes a broad general type of software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent copyright restrictions. A software license (or software licence in commonwealth usage is a Legal instrument governing the usage or redistribution of copyright protected software Copyright is a legal concept enacted by Governments, giving the creator of an original work of authorship Exclusive rights to control its distribution usually for The principles, as stated, say absolutely nothing about trademark or patent use and require absolutely no cooperation to ensure that any common audit or release regime applies to any derived works. A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual A patent is a set of Exclusive rights granted by a State to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an The most general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person organization system process project or product It is an explicit “feature” of open source that it may put no restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user.

It forbids this, in principle, to guarantee continued access to derived works even by the major original contributors. In contrast to free software or open content licenses, which are often confused with open source but have much more rigorous rules and conventions, open source deliberately errs in favor of allowing any use by any party whatsoever, and offers few or no means or recourses to prevent a free rider problem or deal with proliferation of bad copies that mislead end users. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified Open content, a Neologism coined by analogy with " Open source " describes any kind of Creative work published in a format that explicitly allows In Economics, Collective bargaining, Psychology and Political science, "free riders" are those who consume more than their fair share of a resource

Perhaps because of this flexibility, which facilitates large commercial users and vendors, the most successful applications of open source have been in consortium. A consortium is an association of two or more individuals companies organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities with the objective of participating These use other means such as trademarks to control bad copies and require specific performance guarantees from consortium members to assure re-integration of improvements. A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual Accordingly they do not need potentially conflicting clauses in licenses.

The loose definition has led to a proliferation of licenses that can claim to be open source but which would not satisfy the share alike provision that free software and open content licenses require. Share-alike is a descriptive term used in the Creative Commons project for Copyright Licenses which include certain Copyleft provisions Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified Open content, a Neologism coined by analogy with " Open source " describes any kind of Creative work published in a format that explicitly allows A very common license, the Creative Commons CC-by-nc-sa, requires a commercial user to acquire a separate license for-profit use. Creative Commons (CC is a Non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share Share-alike is a descriptive term used in the Creative Commons project for Copyright Licenses which include certain Copyleft provisions This is explicitly against the open source principles, as it discriminates against a type of use or user. However, the requirement imposed by free software to reliably redistribute derived works, does not violate these principles. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified Accordingly, free software and consortium licenses are a type of open source, but open content isn't insofar as it allows such restrictions.

Non-software use

The principles of open source have been adapted for many other forms of user generated content. User generated content ( UGC, often hyphenated also known as Consumer Generated Media ( CGM) or User created Content ( UCC) refers Supporters of the open content movement advocate some restrictions of use, requirements to share changes, and attribution to other authors of the work. Open content, a Neologism coined by analogy with " Open source " describes any kind of Creative work published in a format that explicitly allows In Copyright law attribution is the requirement to acknowledge or credit the author of a work which is used or appears in another work

This “culture” or ideology takes the view that the principles apply more generally to facilitate concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial companies. An ideology is a set of beliefs aims and Ideas especially in politics ^[14]

Advocates of the open source principles often point to Wikipedia as an example, but Wikipedia has in fact often restricted certain types of use or user, and the GFDL license it uses makes specific requirements of all users that technically violate the open source principles. ***************************************************************************************** * * The GNU Free Documentation License ( GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a Copyleft License for free documentation designed by the Free Software

History

Main article: Open Source history

Very similar to open standards, researchers with access to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) used a process called Request for Comments to develop telecommunication network protocols. This is a timeline-style look at how Free software has evolved and existed from its inception An open standard is a Standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it The ARPANET ( Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) developed by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense, was the world's first operational In Computer network Engineering, a Request for Comments (RFC is a Memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF describing Characterized by contemporary open source work, this 1960's collaborative process led to the birth of the Internet in 1969. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks There are earlier instances of open source movements and free software such as IBM's source releases of its operating systems in the 1960s and the SHARE user group that formed to facilitate the exchange of such software. An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination SHARE Inc is a volunteer-run user group for IBM Mainframe computers that was founded in 1955 by Los Angeles-area IBM 701 users

The decision by some people in the free software movement to use the label “open source” came out of a strategy session^[15] held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator. Palo Alto (ˌpæloʊˈæltoʊ from Spanish: palo: "stick" and alto: "high" i California ( is a US state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. Netscape Communications (formerly known as Netscape Communications Corporation and commonly known as Netscape) is an American computer services company Netscape Navigator and Netscape are the names for the proprietary Web browser popular in the 1990s and the Flagship product of the Netscape The group of individuals at the session included Christine Peterson who suggested “open source”, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann and Eric S. Raymond. Larry Augustin is a venture capitalist and the former chairman of VA Software now known as SourceForge Inc Michael Tiemann is Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat Inc as well as President of the Open Source Initiative. Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4 1957 often referred to as ESR, is a Computer programmer, author and Open source software advocate They used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to free themselves of the ideological and confrontational connotations of the term free software. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified Netscape licensed and released its code as open source under the Netscape Public License and subsequently under the Mozilla Public License. Netscape Communications (formerly known as Netscape Communications Corporation and commonly known as Netscape) is an American computer services company The Netscape Public License (NPL is a Free software license, the license under which Netscape Communications Corporation originally released Mozilla The Mozilla Public License (MPL is a free and Open source Software license. ^[16]

The term was given a big boost at an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher Tim O'Reilly. Tim O'Reilly (Tadhg Ó Raghallaigh is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates and a supporter of the Free software and open source Originally titled the “Freeware Summit” and later known as the “Open Source Summit”,^[17] the event brought together the leaders of many of the most important free and open source projects, including Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, Brian Behlendorf, Eric Allman, Guido van Rossum, Michael Tiemann, Paul Vixie, Jamie Zawinski of Netscape, and Eric Raymond. Linus Benedict Torvalds ( ˈtuːrvalds born December 28 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer Larry Wall (born September 27, 1954) is a Programmer and Author, most widely known for his creation of the Perl Programming Brian Behlendorf (Born March 30 1973 is a technologist computer programmer and an important figure in the Open-source software movement Eric Paul Allman (born 1955 is a computer programmer who developed Sendmail and its precursor Delivermail in the late 1970s and early 1980s at UC Berkeley Guido van Rossum is a Dutch Computer programmer who is best known as the author of the Python programming language. Michael Tiemann is Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat Inc as well as President of the Open Source Initiative. Paul Vixie is the author of several RFCs and standard UNIX system programs among them SENDS proxynet rtty and Vixie cron Jamie W Zawinski (born November 3, 1968 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania) commonly known as jwz, is an American computer Programmer Netscape Communications (formerly known as Netscape Communications Corporation and commonly known as Netscape) is an American computer services company At that meeting, the confusion caused by the name “free software” was brought up. Tiemann argued for “sourceware” as a new term, while Raymond argued for “open source. ” The assembled developers took a vote, and the winner was announced at a press conference that evening. Five days later, Raymond made the first public call to the free software community to adopt the new term. ^[18] The Open Source Initiative was formed shortly thereafter. The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting Open-source software. ^[19]

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) formed in February 1998 by Raymond and Perens. With about 20 years of evidence from case histories of closed and open development already provided by the Internet, the OSI continued to present the 'open source' case to commercial businesses. They sought to bring a higher profile to the practical benefits of freely available source code, and wanted to bring major software businesses and other high-tech industries into open source. Perens adapted Debian's Free Software Guidelines to make the The Open Source Definition. Debian ( pronounced) is a computer Operating system composed entirely of Free and open source software. Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge ^[20]

Widely-used open source products

Open source software (OSS) projects are built and maintained by network of volunteer programmers. Open source software (OSS began as a marketing campaign for Free software. Prime examples of open source products are the Apache HTTP Server, the internet address system Internet Protocol, and the internet browser Mozilla Firefox. The Internet Protocol ( IP) is a protocol used for communicating data across a Packet-switched Internetwork using the Internet Protocol Yet, one of the most successful programs is the Linux operating system, an open source Unix-like operating system. Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks A Unix-like (sometimes shortened to *nix) Operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system while not necessarily conforming ^[21][22]

Criticism

The criticisms of the specific Open_Source_Initiative (OSI) principles are dealt with above as part of the definition and differentiation from other terms. The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting Open-source software. The open content movement does not recognize nor endorse the OSI principles and embraces instead mutual share-alike agreements that require derived works to be re-integrated and treated equitably, e. Open content, a Neologism coined by analogy with " Open source " describes any kind of Creative work published in a format that explicitly allows Share-alike is a descriptive term used in the Creative Commons project for Copyright Licenses which include certain Copyleft provisions g. not patented or trademarked to the detriment of the individual contributors/creators. A patent is a set of Exclusive rights granted by a State to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual

Another criticism of the Open Source movement is that these projects may not be really as self-organizing as their proponents claim. This argument holds that successful Open Source projects frequently have a strong central manager, even if that manager is a volunteer. The article Open Source Projects Manage Themselves? Dream On. by Chuck Connell explains this viewpoint. However this is a criticism of the development model, not of the Open Source itself. Also, the author does not state that self organization surely does not work, just points to the cases when the central management was likely involved.

The legal and cultural criticisms are both addressed as part of a common set of objections and criticisms by those who prefer share-alike as an organizing principle. Share-alike is a descriptive term used in the Creative Commons project for Copyright Licenses which include certain Copyleft provisions This includes Creative Commons which simply ignores the OSI principles and endorses licenses that clearly violate them such as CC-by-nc-sa or; Creative Commons, Attribute, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike. Creative Commons (CC is a Non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share Share-alike is a descriptive term used in the Creative Commons project for Copyright Licenses which include certain Copyleft provisions

Of the vocal critics Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF)—whose GFDL license is used by Wikipedia itself, flatly opposes the term “Open Source” being applied to what they refer to as “free software”. The Free Software Foundation ( FSF) is a Non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the Free software movement The GNU Free Documentation License ( GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a Copyleft License for free documentation designed by the Free Software Although it's clear that legally free software does qualify as open source, he considers that the category is abusive. ^[23] They also oppose the professed pragmatism of the Open Source Initiative, as they fear that the free software ideals of freedom and community are threatened by compromising on the FSF's idealistic standards for software freedom. The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting Open-source software. ^[24][25]

Business models

There are a number of commonly recognized barriers to the adoption of open source software by enterprises. These barriers include the perception that open source licenses are viral, lack of formal support and training, the velocity of change, and a lack of a long term roadmap. The majority of these barriers are risk-related. From the other side, not all proprietary projects disclose exact future plans, not all open source licenses are equally viral and many serious OSS projects (especially operating systems) actually make money from paid support and documentation.

Many business models exist around open source software to provide a 'whole product' to help reduce these risks. The 'whole product' typically includes support, commercial licenses, professional services, training, certification, partner programs, references and use cases. These business models range from 'services only' organizations that do not participate in the development of the software to models where the majority of the software is created by full-time committers that are employed by a central organization. Open source software is widely used for private and non-commercial applications These business models have come into existence recently and their operation is not commonly understood. One model that has been developed to explain this is the Bee Keeper Model

A commonly employed Business Strategy of Commercial Open Source Software Firms is the Dual-License Strategy, as demonstrated by MySQL, Alfresco, and others. Strategic management is the art science and craft of formulating implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its objectives MySQL is a Relational database management system (RDBMS which has more than 11 million installations

See also

References

Further reading

• Ron Goldman and Richard P. Gabriel (2005). Innovation Happens Elsewhere. Richard P. Gabriel. ISBN 1558608893.  

Literature on legal and economic aspects

• Benkler, Y. (2002): “Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm." Yale Law Journal 112.3 (Dec 2002): p367(78) (in Adobe pdf format)
• v. Engelhardt, S. (2008): "The Economic Properties of Software", Jena Economic Research Papers, Volume 2 (2008), Number 2008-045. (in Adobe pdf format)
• v. Hippel, E. & v. Krogh, G. (2003): ‘Open source software and the "private-collective" innovation model: Issues for organization science’, Organization Science 14(2), 209–223.
• Lerner, J. & Tirole, J. (2002): ‘Some simple economics on open source’, Journal Of Industrial Economics 50(2), p 197–234.
• Maurer, S. M. (2008): ‘Open source biology: Finding a niche (or maybe several)’, UMKC Law Review 76(2). (download an online version) (in Adobe pdf format)
• Rossi, M. A. (2006): Decoding the free/open source software puzzle: A survey of theoretical and empirical contributions, in J. Bitzer P. Schröder, eds, ‘The Economics of Open Source Software Development’, p 15–55. (download an online version) (in Adobe pdf format)

External links

• An open-source shot in the arm? The Economist, Jun 10th 2004,
• SDForum Distinguished Speaker talks on Open Source Software by Guido van Rossum, Howard Rheingold, and Bruce Perens, 2005.
• SDForum Global Open Source, March 24, 2008
• Machine Learning Open Source Software

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and International affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London

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