Computer Science
Open Source Software
Open source software refers to computer programs whose source code is made available to the public for use, modification, and distribution. This approach allows for collaborative development and encourages transparency and community involvement. Open source software is often free to use and is governed by licenses that ensure the code remains open and accessible.
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12 Key excerpts on "Open Source Software"
eBook - ePub- Nikki Cordell, Sam De Silva, Sara Ellacott, Victoria Hordern, Stewart James, Andrew Katz, Andy Lucas, Jennifer Pierce, Stuart Smith, Jeremy Holt, Jeremy Newton(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT(Publisher)
10 Open Source SoftwareAndrew Katz and Michaela MacDonald
INTRODUCTION
Open Source Software is software that is made available under a form of licence that ensures any recipient is free to use, modify and distribute it.Over the last 30 years, and despite early fears that using open source would expose organisations to vulnerabilities and claims for intellectual property infringement, Open Source Software has become mainstream and now makes up the majority of the software currently being created around the world. It provides the operating system for computers of all sizes, from mobile phones to laptops to games consoles and smart home gadgets, right through to supercomputers. The leading technology platform companies of the moment – Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft – all make significant use of Open Source Software. The French tax system and Transport for London’s Oyster Card system rely on it.This chapter explains what ‘Open Source Software’ is, how and why it developed as a business model, and the principal types of open source licence that IT managers are likely to come across.WHAT IS OPEN SOURCE?
‘Source code’ is software’s blueprint. A programmer writes source code in a computer language, which more-or-less resembles instructions in English, and then uses software tools (compilers and linkers) to generate object code from the source. Source code is the form of software created by humans; object code is the form of software run by computers.However, the distinction is becoming blurred as many modern programming languages (such as JavaScript and Python) run the source code directly, although the version run by the computer has had comments and other attributes helpful to the programmer stripped out. For this reason, it is often better to refer to the source code as ‘the preferred form of the code for making modifications’.Traditional (proprietary) software is supplied solely as object code. For example, a copy of Microsoft Office purchased from Microsoft Corporation will include the object code of Word, Excel and so on, but none of the source code, which is a closely guarded Microsoft secret. The source code is not needed to run the software, but it is (in practice) needed to correct bugs or change the program.
- Paul Kavanagh(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Digital Press(Publisher)
1 1 Open Source Software: Definitions and History If you are going to become an advocate for Open Source Software, there are some definitions, frequently asked questions, and historic issues that will be raised repeatedly. We will cover them in this chapter. 1.1 Definition of Terms Open Source Software is software that must be distributed with source code included or easily available, such as by free download from the Internet. The source code should be in the same form that a programmer would actually use to maintain it—not, for instance, a generated, obfuscated, or intermediate code form. The license of this software will not restrict others from distributing the code or modifications and derived works under the same terms. It will not discriminate against people or fields of endeavor. Sample licenses are included in an appendix. The Open Source Definition is included in Appendix B. The Open Source Definition (OSD) was originally written by Bruce Perens for Debian Linux and was completed in 1997. It is an established definition of open source that is simple without being too simple, and it includes several licenses that are acceptable. Some people call software like this, distributed under licenses such as the GPL, Apache, or Mozilla licenses, “Open Source Software.” Others call it “Free Software.” Yet others, particularly in Europe, call it “Free/Libre or Open Source Software” (FLOSS). Capitalization of these terms varies. There are other expressions in use also, but the most widely used term seems to be open source. In this book, we will refer to software that meets the Open Source Definition as “open source.” This is a simple expression that avoids capitalization and acronyms such as “OSS,” both of which are annoying to read repeatedly. 2 1.1 Definition of Terms The alternatives to open source can be called proprietary software, com-mercial software, or, alternatively, nonopen, nonfree, or closed software.
eBook - ePub- Nicole Engard(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Chandos Publishing(Publisher)
It is important to note here that there are some discrepancies between the definitions of Open Source Software and free software. Despite these differences, for the purposes of this resource, the two will be used interchangeably simply because I agree with Scot Colford when he says that ‘for practical purposes they provide the same basic advantages (and challenges) in a library or information science setting.’ 9 In fact, this is why many writers will refer to FOSS or F/OSS when talking about free and/or Open Source Software. 1.1 Definition of free software Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program’s users have the four essential freedoms: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Source: Free Software Foundation, Inc., The Free Software Definition, 2009, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html. While all of the applications discussed later in this book are available for download for free, it is important to realize that there can be monetary costs associated with choosing an open source application. 1.2 Definition of Open Source Software Introduction Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of Open Source Software must comply with the following criteria: 1
eBook - ePubThe World Is Open
How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education
- Curtis J. Bonk(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Jossey-Bass(Publisher)
30 Ironically, the hackers were not simply separated from each other but often from the computers, which were housed in designated computer rooms. The reduced social interaction with their peers diminished the culture of free and open exchange of ideas, and this in turn limited or further curtailed their access to computers and the programs that run them. It was a viciously bad cycle, especially for the self-esteem and dignity of the hacker culture.Things began to change, however, with the free software movement and then later the open source movement. When Guohua Pan and I spoke with Eric Raymond in January 2006, he told us that the term open source first drew media attention in, where else, Palo Alto, California.31 It was February 3, 1998. This was the day that Netscape announced it would release the source code of its Navigator tool that later emerged as Mozilla 1.0.32 Instead of the “free” label, often deemed confrontational to the business community, Christine Peterson, an influential figure in nontechnology and intellectual property, suggested the more pragmatic and business-friendly label of “open source.” Raymond and many others in the open source movement, including Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, John Hall, and Sam Ockman, attended the session.Since that historic event, the term open source has been widely adopted to refer to any computer software program whose source code is free to use, modify, and redistribute—typically for its licensed users. An Open Source Software product, in contrast to commercial software, is designed by a community of users or a consortium of organizations and institutions with a joint interest in the resulting product. Such groups also help in the modification of the product and updates. Because the source code is openly available, any individual or organization can download and upgrade it for its own use. Moreover, as Brad Wheeler noted in Educause Review, such an organization can usually redistribute copies of either the original or the modified program.33Educational organizations realize many benefits from using free and Open Source Software. For one, there is innovation, creativity, and some sense of voice or control outside of commercial vendors. Now anyone with an idea for educational software can write code or work with others to write code that can benefit people from around the globe. For the first time in the history of this planet, a talented person from any country or province can have a positive impact on any educational idea. Bill Joy, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, is known to have said that “most of the smart people in the world work somewhere else.”34
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- White Word Publications(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter 2 Open-Source Software The logo of the Open Source Initiative Open-source software ( OSS ) is computer software that is available in source code form for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software. Some open source licenses meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition. Some Open Source Software is available within the public domain. Open Source Software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open-source development and often compared to (technically defined) user-generated content or (legally defined) open content movements. A report by Standish Group states that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ 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 definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens. They are by no means definitive even as applied to software. Clause 3 is the primary legal difference between free software and Open Source Software as such, free software is stricter in interpreting 3. Clauses 5 and 6 are not a condition of any major open content license regimes, which commonly do restrict types of uses and users; for instance, Creative Commons has open content licenses that explicitly forbid commercial use. Introduction Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: 1.
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- White Word Publications(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter 1 Open-Source Software The logo of the Open Source Initiative Open-source software ( OSS ) is computer software that is available in source code form for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software. Some open source licenses meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition. Some Open Source Software is available within the public domain. Open Source Software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open-source development and often compared to (technically defined) user-generated content or (legally defined) open content movements. A report by Standish Group states that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ 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 definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens. They are by no means definitive even as applied to software. Clause 3 is the primary legal difference between free software and Open Source Software as such, free software is stricter in interpreting 3. Clauses 5 and 6 are not a condition of any major open content license regimes, which commonly do restrict types of uses and users; for instance, Creative Commons has open content licenses that explicitly forbid commercial use. Introduction Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: 1.
eBook - PDFInnovation Happens Elsewhere
Open Source as Business Strategy
- Ron Goldman, Richard P. Gabriel(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Morgan Kaufmann(Publisher)
CHAPTER 3 What Is Open Source? THERE IS AN EXISTING LARGE OPEN-SOURCE COMMUNITY with established prac- tices and culture. Companies and others wishing to start or join an existing open-source project need to understand the ground rules and established practices for this larger community because the term open source sets expectations that need to be either met or explained. A good way to conceptualize this is to think of the open-source community as a foreign country with its own culture and every open- source project as existing in that country. Although it might be possible to impose different cultural rules on that project, it is more likely to be easier to adopt existing customs. Therefore, understanding open source as it exists is crucial to success. There are many definitions of what constitutes open source. The basic idea is very simple: By making the source code for a piece of software available to all, any programmer can modify it to better suit his or her needs and redistribute the improved version to other users. By working together, a community of both users and developers can improve the functionality and quality of the software. Thus to be open source requires that anyone can get and modify the source code and that they can freely redistribute any derived works they create from it. The different licenses have various wrinkles on whether modifications must also be made into open source or if they can be kept proprietary. Later in this book we also discuss cases that do not meet the full definition of open source but do involve some form of collaborative development of the source code, for example, Java. Open Source in Brief In practice, a typical open-source project uses a web or other Internet site as the repository for the source code, documentation, discussions, design documents, bug and issue lists, and other artifacts associated with the project.
eBook - ePub- Victoria Martin(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Libraries Unlimited(Publisher)
CHAPTER TWO The Free Software Movement and the Open Source Initiative Unlocking the Source Code Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. —Richard Stallman (1985) Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse). —Eric Raymond (2001, 24)In the proprietary software industry, source code—the basic medium providing a computer’s operating system with instructions on producing a software application—is hidden from public view due to the licensing terms, and the software itself is distributed in compiled form. Users can run the program but cannot look “under the hood” to see the source code that the program is built on or make any modifications to that code. While specific license terms may vary, users of proprietary software are typically constrained to a certain number of installations on a limited number of computers. Vendors use this “closed” code approach to make profit by having exclusive control over their products. In addition, vendors use a lock-in strategy to guard off competitors. In vendor lock-in, customers depend on a particular vendor for services and products and are unable to switch to a different vendor without substantial expense, either in monetary terms or in terms of time and effort.Free software and Open Source Software (sometimes inappropriately referred to as FOSS, meaning “Free and Open Source Software,” or as FLOSS, meaning “Free/Libre and Open Source Software”)1
eBook - PDF- Gerard Prudhomme(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Arcler Press(Publisher)
Software Adaptation in an Open Environment 196 (which are sometimes more proprietary than free), and free software packaged (possibly upgraded). However, the free software community already had competitors at the time. I’m not the first to try to define what free software is. Where can we find detailed information on these legal definitions? The only way to protect software was to keep it secret, which was not the strategy supported by public institutions and emerging computer companies. The free software community writes programs in a programming language derived from human language (usually English). Its source code is available, but the author asks to be contacted for any broadcast of a modified version. Freedoms 1 and 3 require permission to access the base code. An important way to modify a program is to merge it with free modules or subroutines. And to finish the freedom to improve the program by modifying the source code and distributing these improvements to a community that grows day by day. For an example of a famous free software package, Gimp is an image processing package, and can in most cases replace Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (Gimp runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux). Among the many existing free software community forges, source forge is probably the best known. For example, copyleft (to summarize very simply) is a rule that states that when you redistribute the program, you cannot add a restriction that denies the fundamental freedoms of others. The famous transparency that is claimed elsewhere is applied here in the computer field. I believe there are good reasons for preferring copyleft. Open software means software that uses open standards or formats. This chapter will give you only a very small overview. With free software, on the contrary, there can be no such restriction. The licenses allow to know the precise rights, to say that a software is under copyleft does not necessarily guarantee the total freedom, or the rights may not suit you.
eBook - PDFTwo Bits
The Cultural Significance of Free Software
- Christopher M. Kelty, Michael M. J. Fischer, Joseph Dumit, Michael M. J. Fischer, Joseph Dumit(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Duke University Press Books(Publisher)
These practices emerge as a response to a reorientation of power and knowledge, a reorientation somewhat impervious to the movement 117 conventional narratives of freedom and liberty, or to pragmatic claims of methodological necessity or market-driven innovation. Were these conventional narratives sufficient, the practices would be merely bureaucratic affairs, rather than the radical transforma -tions they are. 4. Sharing Source Code Free Software would be nothing without shared source code. The idea is built into the very name “Open Source,” and it is a require-ment of all Free Software licenses that source code be open to view, not “welded shut.” Perhaps ironically, source code is the most ma-terial of the five components of Free Software; it is both an ex -pressive medium, like writing or speech, and a tool that performs concrete actions. It is a mnemonic that translates between the illeg-ible electron-speed doings of our machines and our lingering ability to partially understand and control them as human agents. Many Free Software programmers and advocates suggest that “informa-tion wants to be free” and that sharing is a natural condition of human life, but I argue something contrary: sharing produces its own kind of moral and technical order, that is, “information makes people want freedom” and how they want it is related to how that information is created and circulated. In this chapter I explore the 119 sharing source code twisted and contingent history of how source code and its sharing have come to take the technical, legal, and pedagogical forms they have today, and how the norms of sharing have come to seem so natural to geeks.
eBook - PDF- Khaled El Emam(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Auerbach Publications(Publisher)
11.1 Adoption of OSS The adoption of OSS is increasing. Some open source systems, such as the Apache Web server, the Linux operating system, and the MySQL database, are becoming highly respected and emerging as real alternatives to incumbent CSS. Some of the popular OSS applications are large, and their development is in the same league as large commercial projects. For example, Debian Linux has been estimated to be larger than 50 million lines of code. 1 Red Hat Linux (version 7.1) was counted to have more than 30 million lines of code, with the kernel at more than 2.4 million lines of code. 2 Windows 3.1 was 3 million SLOC, Windows 95 was 15 million LOC, and Windows 2000 is 29 million SLOC. 3,4 We begin by presenting some data on the extent of adoption of OSS and the reasons behind it. 11.1.1 Definition Open Source Software OSS software comes in many guises. The most common definition of an OSS product is: The source code is made available. The user can sell, give away, or redistribute the source code. The source code can be modified and extended, and must be distributed under the same licensing terms as the original license. There are additional requirements for an application to qualify as OSS (these are defined at the Open Source Initiative Web site ), but the ones above are the most critical. There are many licensing schemes for OSS that are discussed elsewhere; 5 however, the GNU General Public License is by far the most commonly used. 11.1.2 Reasons for Adoption Surveys show that enterprises adopt OSS primarily because they believe it is cheaper to acquire than alternative CSS solutions and that they have a lower total cost of ownership. 6,7 Many IT managers believe that OSS is The Quality of Open Source Software 161 free. 8 Close behind is the belief that OSS is more reliable and more secure than CSS. 6 11.1.3 Adoption of OSS When evaluating the adoption of OSS, we can look at specific examples of adoption to illustrate potential.
eBook - PDF- Steven Weber, Steve WEBER(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Harvard University Press(Publisher)
By the middle of 2000 Linux ran more than a third of the servers that make up the web. It was making substantial inroads into other segments of computing, all the way from major enterprise-level systems (in banks, insurance companies, and major database operations) to embedded software in smart chips and appliances. And in 1999 Linux became a public relations phenome-non. VA Linux and Red Hat Software—two companies that package and service versions of Linux as well as other open source programs— startled Wall Street when they emerged among the most successful ini-tial public offerings on NASDAQ. Suddenly the arcane subjects of op-erating systems and source code had moved from the technical jour-nals to the front page of The New York Times. And open source became a kind of modern day Rorschach test for the Internet-enabled society. Chapter 4 contains a detailed history of how open source evolved from about 1990 to the present. This chapter describes the phenome-non: What is open source and how does it function? To make sense of What Is Open Source and How Does It Work? • 55 the data that captures what we know about the open source movement and the people who contribute to it requires an understanding of what we are measuring and why. That sounds obvious, but putting this prin-ciple into practice is not so simple. Linux is just one example of an ex-tremely diverse phenomenon. To approach this analytic problem, I use a two-pronged strategy. First, I present a simple and sparse ideal-typical description of an open source project. As an ideal type it cap-tures the major shared characteristics of open source, although it is not itself “true” for any single project. 3 Second, I situate this ideal type within the framework of a production process, a conceptual move central to the logic of this book. The es-sence of open source is not the software. It is the process by which soft-ware is created. Think of the software itself as an artifact of the produc-tion process.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
