Yes , open source
The term ” open source ” describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end’s user source materials .
The basic idea behind open source is very simple. When programmers can read, redistribute , and modify the source code for a piece of software , the software evolves. People will improve it , adapt it and fix bugs .
Open source software is software where the source code is freely available. Users are free to make improvements and redistribute as long as they committed to certain conditions. The most famous open source software is the operating system, Linux.
Conversely, the source code for proprietary software is generally kept secret. A user purchases only the compiled version of proprietary software and has no choice but to use the software ‘as is’.
In 1984, Richard Stallman started the GNU project. The GNU project’s goal was, simply put, to make it so that no one would ever have to pay for software. The first step was to develop a complete UNIX style operating system, the GNU system. The GNU system would become the first ‘free’ software .
“My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better. ” , Stallman describes the motivation behind free software .
The Open – Source Licence
Traditionally, copyright has been employed to reserve all copyright for sale (all rights reserved) in connection with an original work. Conversely, an open source licence is a legal instrument used to make a work freely available. The term ‘free’ does not mean free of charge. It refers to a user’s freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software without the payment of a royalty or obtaining express permission.
Open-source licences make use of the copyright rights applicable to computer programs to secure several standard conditions. Anyone can copy, distribute, and modify open source software as long as they committed to the conditions. The conditions ensure that successive developments of source code may remain available for additional improvement. Anyone violating the conditions may be subjected to legal repercussions under copyright law .
There are many licences like Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) licence, which allows licencees to create private derived works (i.e. commercial software with unpublished source code) and does not require that changes to the public version be published in any form .
There’s also GNU General Public Licence (GPL) licence, which creates an obligation to distribute, without fee or additional licence terms, the source code of all derivative works.
In between the BSD and the GPL on the spectrum of restrictiveness, is the Mozilla Public licence (MPL). Changes to MPL-covered source must be made freely available on the Internet. The MPL, however, is non-viral: additions to (as opposed to modifications of) the ‘MPL-licenced source’ to create a larger work may be licenced differently and need not be published at all.
An open-source developer can commercially licence software already available under an open-source licence. The commercial licence would ‘sell’ use of the software without the conditions imposed by the open source licence. This practice is known as dual-licensing. Open-source licences are not intended to ban commercial use. As a general rule, open source can be used commercially as long as the authors get a cut. However, commercial licencing can get complicated if the Open Source Software has multiple components by different authors and under different licences .
well , that’s a brief article about Open Source , hope you like it
Published 24 March 2011 on : http://catazinelive.net/2011/03/24/open-what/
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