2 The open source movement

The open source movement is a large movement of programmers and other computer users that advocates unrestricted access to the source code of software. It grew out of licenses such as BSD, the ubiquitous access to Unix source code at universities and goals which differ somewhat from those of the Free software movement. The line between the two is somewhat blurry; both are founded in the hacker culture. Mostly, the Free software movement is based upon political and philosophical ideals, while open source proponents tend to focus on more pragmatic arguments. Openness is a term that has evolved now to refer to projects that are open to anyone and everyone to contribute to, before and/or after the actual programming. Both groups assert that this more open style of licensing allows for a superior software development process, and therefore that pursuing it is in line with rational self-interest. Free software advocates, however, would argue that "freedom" is a paramount merit that one should prefer (or at least weigh heavily) even in cases where proprietary software has some superior technical features.

Proponents of the open source development methodology claim that it is superior in a number of ways to the closed source method (and some individuals may suggest that the open source methodology is the methodology that is able to produce the quality of software that can be higher than that produced by any other methodology or technique). Stability, reliability, and security are frequently cited as reasons to support open source. One successful application of the open source model is the Linux operating system, which is renowned for its stability and security characteristics. Among the works that explore and justify open source development is a series of works by Eric S. Raymond which includes The Cathedral and the Bazaar and Homesteading the Noosphere.

Open source advocates point out that as of the early 2000s, at least 90 percent of computer programmers are employed not to produce software for direct sale, but rather to design and customize software for other purposes, such as in-house applications. According to advocates, this statistic implies that the value of software lies primarily in its usefulness to the developer or developing organization, rather than in its potential sale value, and that consequently there is usually no compelling economic reason to keep source code secret from competitors. Open-source advocates further argue that corporations frequently over-protect software in ways actually damaging to their own interests, for reasons ranging from mere institutional habit through reflexive territoriality to a rational but incorrect evaluation of the tradeoffs between collecting secrecy rent and the quality and market payoff of openness.

3 The open source debate

The debate over open source vs. closed source (alternatively called proprietary development) is very much a religious war. While vast numbers of the current technology community members are proponents of open source, there are also people on the other side of the debate. The most obvious complaint against open source software involves the complaint that making money through some traditional methods, such as the sale of the use of individual copies and patent royalty payments, is much more difficult and sometimes impractical with open source software. Some software development companies sell the rights to use individual copies of software as their primary source of income, using a combination of copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret laws (collectively called intellectual property rights laws). By keeping their software source code hidden, they can make it impractical to make changes to a program they develop, and demand fees for its use and improvement. While most software is written for internal use, the fees from sale and license of commercial software are the primary source of income for companies which do sell software. Additionally, some companies with large research and development teams develop extensive patent portfolios, again with the purpose of making money from patent royalties. These companies can charge licensing fees for the use of their patents in software, however open source distribution creates the potential for an infinite number of derived works using the patented technology with no payment to the patent holder.

Open source software advocates counter that there are a large number of alternative funding streams, and that these funding models are actually better-connected to the real costs of creating and maintaining software. After all, making a copy of a software program is essentially zero, so per-use fees may make sense for physical products but are not reasonable for software programs. At one time, open source software develop was almost entirely volunteer-driven, and this is still true for many small projects. However, a large number of alternative funding streams have been identified and employed for open source software:

• give away the program and charge for installation and support (this is the model used by many Linux distributions). * "commoditize complements", that is, intentionally make one product cheaper so that the user is more likely to purchase a product or service you do sell (this is a primary reason for OpenOffice.org; Sun gives away the office suite to encourage users to buy their computer hardware).
• cost avoidance / cost sharing; many developers need the product, so they share the cost of its development (this is the genesis of the X Window system and Apache).

Increasingly open source software is developed by commercial organizations. In 2004, Andrew Morton noted that 37,000 of the 38,000 recent patches in the Linux kernel were created by developers directly paid to develop the Linux kernel. Many projects, such as the X Window system and Apache, have had commercial development as a primary source of improvements since their inception, and this trend has accelerated over time.

One argument made against open source software is that closed source development allows more control over the final product, though this argument does not much support. The theory behind this argument is that open source software is primarily a volunteer effort, while closed-source development is typically a salary-driven effort. By having the monetary resources to fund developers and management, and the ability to control development in a given direction, closed source proponents argue that development can be more efficient and more focused. But this argument misses many key points. First, it is no longer true that OSS is necessarily a volunteer effort; increasingly this is actually not true. Also, a project can be primarily in-house or not, independent of whether or not it's open source. If a project is developed entirely externally to an organization, without any support, then of course that project need not take that organization's needs seriously. However, an organization can devote increasing amounts of resources to ensure its needs are met. At the extreme end, an organization could "fork" an open source development project and add the critical components it needs. In the end, an open source software program always greater flexibility to end-users, since any end user can take the program and modify it for their needs.

Large scale open-source projects such as Linux, FreeBSD, or Apache tend to discredit this argument. However, even within these very successful projects, there are sometimes technological components missing due to the fact that no one has the time or effort to volunteer to do them, nor a commercial company whose interests cause it to fund such work. Of course, this also applies to proprietary products; proprietary products also omit technological components because the expected return is less than other alternatives, even if they are important to a particular customer.

4 Open source advocates

5 Projects and organizations

• Debian, FreeBSD, Mozilla, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, OpenOffice.org, Open Source Initiative, OSTG, Slackware, BerliOS, SourceForge, NOSI, GNU, GOCC

6 Examples of open source licenses

• BSD license, GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, MIT License, Apache Software License, Mozilla Public License

For a more extensive list, see Open source license.

7 Examples of open source software

• Apache, Linux, BSD, Mozilla, GNU Emacs, TeX, Vim, XFree86, the GIMP, PHP, Zope, KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice.org, MySQL, Moodle, Postnuke, phpBB, GnucDNA , Shareaza, RPGToolkit

For a more extensive list, see List of open-source software packages.

8 Related topics

9 See also

• Free software
• Gift economy
• GNU Savannah
• Halloween documents
• List of open-source software packages
• OpenCola
• Open Law project
• SourceForge

9.1 Contrast with

• Freeware
• Shareware
• Proprietary software

10 External links

On the creation of the name "Open Source":

• Goodbye, "free software"; hello, "open source" Raymond's announcement of the term "open source", 8 February 1998
• It's Still Free Software 16 Feb 1998, Richard Stallman. The terminology battle begins.
• "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again" 12 months later, Bruce Perens chimes in.
• Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" - a later essay from FSF.

General links about open source: