The term 'open source' was coined to dodge the word 'free'
Programmers had shared source code since the 1950s, and a free software movement took shape in the 1980s. But 'free' confused people, meaning both liberty and no cost, and made businesses nervous. So in 1998 advocates founded the Open Source Initiative and promoted a new label, one that now covers much of the code running the modern world.
Open-source software publishes its source code so anyone may use, study, change and share it, usually under a licence and occasionally by placing it in the public domain. Well-known examples include the Linux kernel, the Firefox browser and MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia. A 2022 estimate found that 80 to 96 percent of the code inside software on the market, proprietary products included, originates as open source, and it underpins web servers, cloud platforms, supercomputers and artificial intelligence.
The standard yardstick is the Open Source Definition, whose ten criteria, adapted mainly by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond from Debian's free software guidelines, include a ban on discriminating against any person, group or field of use. Yet the Initiative has no legal control over the phrase, so its meaning rests on convention, and arguments over that non-discrimination rule have been described as a decades-long culture war. Rival labels such as source-available, fair source and ethical source have sprung up, along with the mocking 'fauxpen source'. Even public-domain code is contested; the Initiative has said both that it effectively is open source and that treating it so is incorrect.
Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation initially accepted the new term but now firmly rejects it. He agrees the two cover almost the same programs, yet argues that 'open source' stresses mere visibility of the code rather than users' freedom; digital rights management software, for instance, could be open source while restricting its users, and so would not count as free.
Authors keep copyright and grant rights through licences. Where contributors have not signed agreements, ownership is split among everyone who contributed, which is why some projects require copyright assignment so they can relicense later. Its ubiquity also brings real cybersecurity and maintenance burdens, and organisations increasingly set up dedicated offices to manage their open-source strategy.
Source: Open-source software
