Open source typically refers to software whose source code is made available, enabling use, modification, and redistribution. It is primarily associated with software distributed under licenses that meet the criteria of the Open Source Definition maintained by the Open Source Initiative, which permit anyone to use it for any purpose, although the term is sometimes used more broadly for software distributed with source code under different conditions reflecting divergence over the usage of the term and its precise definition. The concept has also been applied beyond software to other digital resources made available alongside their source files or design documents, such as Open Source Educational Resources, Open-source hardware or open-source film.
The open source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open source eCommerce, open source appropriate technology, and open source drug discovery.
Open source promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of other terms, such as free software, shareware, and public domain software. The term Open source was introduced in 1998 and gained hold with the rise of the Internet. The open-source software movement arose to clarify copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues.
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for usage, modification from its original design, and publication of their version (fork) back to the community. Many large formal institutions have sprung up to support the development of the open-source movement, including the Apache Software Foundation, which supports community projects such as the open-source framework and the open-source HTTP server Apache HTTP.
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