Open-source Software
Definition and Overview
Open-source software (OSS) is a type of computer software in which the source code is released under a license that grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open-source development and often compared to proprietary software.
History
The concept of open-source software originated in the context of software development, which often involves access to the source code. In the early days of computing, programmers and developers shared software in order to learn from each other and evolve the field of computing. Eventually, the open-source notion moved to the way side of commercialization of software in the years 1970-1980. However, academics still often developed software collaboratively. For example, Donald Knuth in 1979 with the TeX typesetting system or Richard Stallman in 1983 with the GNU operating system. In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape to release their popular Netscape Navigator web browser as free software.
Licensing
Open-source licenses are licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition — in brief, they allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared. To be approved by the Open Source Initiative, a license must go through the Open Source Initiative's license review process. Popular open-source licenses include the GNU General Public License, Apache License, MIT License, and Mozilla Public License.
Development and Community
Open-source software development, or collaborative development between multiple independent contributors, has had a significant impact on the evolution of the software industry. Prominent examples of open-source software products are the Apache web server, the e-commerce platform osCommerce, internet browsers Mozilla Firefox and Chromium, and the full office suite LibreOffice. Moreover, a number of open-source software projects have had a profound impact on the development of the world wide web, such as the Linux operating system and the MySQL relational database management system.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Open-source software is usually easier to obtain than proprietary software, often resulting in increased use. Additionally, the availability of an open source implementation of a standard can increase adoption of that standard. On the other hand, the informal nature of the open-source development model can make it difficult to enforce design decisions, often resulting in a project fork. Furthermore, there is often a lack of explicit system architectural documentation, which can limit the potential reuse of the software components.
Impact and Applications
Open-source software has had a significant impact on the computer industry since the late 1990s, and has been instrumental in the development of the Internet and the world-wide-web. Today, open source software is ubiquitous, often making up the backbone of the Internet, data centers, and personal computing. Moreover, it has also been instrumental in the development of many areas of software engineering, such as web technologies, data science, machine learning, and network security.
