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Open Source


Open Source means source code is freely available. 

Open source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available and licensed with an open source license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. 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.



Practical Differences between Free Software and Open Source

In practice, open source stands for criteria a little weaker than those of free software. As far as we know, all existing free software would qualify as open source. Nearly all open source software is free software, but there are exceptions. First, some open source licenses are too restrictive, so they do not qualify as free licenses. Fortunately, few programs use those licenses.

Second, and more important, many products containing computers (including many Android devices) come with executable programs that correspond to free software source code, but the devices do not allow the user to install modified versions of those executables; only one special company has the power to modify them. We call these devices “tyrants”, and the practice is called “tivoization” after the product where we first saw it. These executables are not free software even though their source code is free software. The criteria for open source do not recognize this issue; they are concerned solely with the licensing of the source code.