Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product.
History The principle of open source software development is peer production. Code is released under the terms of a software license. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.
Economics Open source eliminates some of the access costs of consumers and creators of derivative works by reducing the restrictions of copyright. Basic economic theory predicts that lower costs would lead to higher consumption and also more frequent creation of derivative works.
Licensing alternatives Example alternatives include: - Creation for its own sake - Voluntary after-the-fact donations - Patron - Freemium - Give away the product and charge something related - Give away work to gain market share - Blockchain based licensing
Open collaboration It was observed initially in open-source software, but can also be found in many other instances, such as in Internet forums, mailing lists, Internet communities, and many instances of open content. It also explains some instances of crowdsourcing, collaborative consumption, and open innovation.
Open-source license Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of other terms. Open source gained hold in part due to the rise of the Internet.
Applications The open-source movement has inspired increased transparency and liberty in biotechnology research, for example CAMBIA.
Computer software Open source software is software which source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees.
Electronics Open source hardware is hardware which initial specification, usually in a software format, is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the hardware and source code without paying royalties or fees.
Food and beverages Some publishers of open-access journals have argued that data from food science and gastronomy studies should be freely available to aid reproducibility. A number of people have published creative commons licensed recipe books.
Digital content Open-content projects organized by the Wikimedia Foundation – Sites such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary have embraced the open-content Creative Commons content licenses.
Medicine Pharmaceuticals – There have been several proposals for open-source pharmaceutical development. Genomics – The term "open-source genomics" refers to the combination of rapid release of sequence data and crowdsourced analyses from bioinformaticians around the world that characterised the analysis of the 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak.
Science and engineering Research – The Science Commons was created as an alternative to the expensive legal costs of sharing and reusing scientific works in journals etc. Research – The Open Solar Outdoors Test Field (OSOTF) is a grid-connected photovoltaic test system, which continuously monitors the output of a number of photovoltaic modules and correlates their performance to a long list of highly accurate meteorological readings.
Robotics An open-source robot is a robot whose blueprints, schematics, or source code are released under an open-source model
Other Open-source principles can be applied to technical areas such as digital communication protocols and data storage formats. Open-design – which involves applying open-source methodologies to the design of artifacts and systems in the physical world.
"Open" versus "free" versus "free and open" Free and open-source software (FOSS) or free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) is openly shared source code that is licensed without any restrictions on usage, modification, or distribution. Confusion persists because the "free", also known as "libre", refers to the freedom of the product, not the price, expense, cost, or charge.
Software Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use for any (including commercial) purpose, or modification from its original design. Open-source code is meant to be a collaborative effort, where programmers improve upon the source code and share the changes within the community. Code is released under the terms of a software license. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.
Hardware RISC-V
Agriculture, economy, manufacturing and production Open-source appropriate technology (OSAT), is designed for environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, economic, and community aspects Open-design movement, development of physical products, machines and systems via publicly shared design information, including free and open-source software and open-source hardware, among many others: Open Architecture Network, improving global living conditions through innovative sustainable design OpenCores, a community developing digital electronic open-source hardware Open Design Alliance, develops Teigha, a software development platform to create engineering applications including CAD software Open Hardware and Design Alliance (OHANDA), sharing open hardware and designs via free online services Open Source Ecology (OSE), a network of farmers, engineers, architects and supporters striving to manufacture the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) OpenStructures (OSP), a modular construction model where everyone designs on the basis of one shared geometrical OS grid Open manufacturing or "Open Production" or "Design Global, Manufacture Local", a new socioeconomic production model to openly and collaboratively produce and distribute physical objects Open-source architecture (OSArc), emerging procedures in imagination and formation of virtual and real spaces within an inclusive universal infrastructure Open-source cola, cola soft drinks made to open-sourced recipes Open-source hardware, or open hardware, computer hardware, such as microprocessors, that is designed in the same fashion as open source software List of open-source hardware projects Open-source product development (OSPD), collaborative product and process openness of open-source hardware for any interested participants Open-source robotics, physical artifacts of the subject are offered by the open design movement Open Source Seed Initiative, open source varieties of crop seeds, as an alternative to patent-protected seeds sold by large agriculture companies.
Science and medicine Open science, the movement to make scientific research, data and dissemination accessible to all levels of an inquiring society, amateur or professional Open science data, a type of open data focused on publishing observations and results of scientific activities available for anyone to analyze and reuse Open Science Framework and the Center for Open Science Open Source Lab (disambiguation), several laboratories Open-Source Lab (book), a 2014 book by Joshua M. Pearce Open-source physics (OSP), a National Science Foundation and Davidson College project to spread the use of open source code libraries that take care of much of the heavy lifting for physics Open Source Geospatial Foundation NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA), an OSI-approved software license List of open-source software for mathematics List of open-source bioinformatics software List of open-source health software List of open-source health hardware
Media Open-source film, open source movies List of open-source films Open Source Cinema, a collaborative website to produce a documentary film Open-source journalism, commonly describes a spectrum on online publications, forms of innovative publishing of online journalism, and content voting, rather than the sourcing of news stories by "professional" journalists Open-source investigation See also: Crowdsourcing, crowdsourced journalism, crowdsourced investigation, trutherism, and historical revisionism considered "fringe" by corporate media. Open-source record label, open source music "Open Source", a 1960s rock song performed by The Magic Mushrooms Open Source (radio show), a radio show using open content information gathering methods hosted by Christopher Lydon Open textbook, an open copyright licensed textbook made freely available online for students, teachers, and the public CAD libraries - such as SketchUp 3D Warehouse and GrabCAD
Organizations Open Source Initiative (OSI), an organization dedicated to promote open source Open Source Software Institute Journal of Open Source Software Open Source Day, the dated varies from year to year for an international conference for fans of open solutions from Central and Eastern Europe Open Source Developers' Conference Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a non-profit corporation that provides space for open-source project Open Source Drug Discovery, a collaborative drug discovery platform for neglected tropical diseases Open Source Technology Group (OSTG), news, forums, and other SourceForge resources for IT Open source in Kosovo Open Source University Meetup New Zealand Open Source Awards
Procedures Open security, application of open source philosophies to computer security Open Source Information System, the former name of an American unclassified network serving the U.S. intelligence community with open-source intelligence, since mid-2006 the content of OSIS is now known as Intelink-U while the network portion is known as DNI-U Open-source intelligence, an intelligence gathering discipline based on information collected from open sources (not to be confused with open-source artificial intelligence such as Mycroft (software)).
Society The idea of an "open-source" culture runs parallel to "Free Culture", but is substantively different. Free culture is a term derived from the free software movement, and in contrast to that vision of culture, proponents of open-source culture (OSC) maintain that some intellectual property law needs to exist to protect cultural producers. 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")