The open source movement is a broad-reaching movement of individuals who support the use of open source licences for some or all software.. Open source software is made available for anybody to use or modify, as its source code is made available. Some open-source software is based on a share-alike principle, whereby users are free to pass on the software subject to the stipulation that any enhancements or changes are just as freely available to the public, while other open-source projects may be freely incorporated into any derivative work, open-source or proprietary. Open source software promotes learning and understanding through the dissemination of understanding. The main difference between open-source and traditional proprietary software is in user and property rights, the conditions of use imposed on the user by the software license, as opposed to differences in the programming code. With open source software, such as OpenOffice, users are granted the right to both the program's functionality and methodology. With proprietary software programs, such as Microsoft Office, users only have the rights to functionality. Examples of popular open source software products include Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, Android and the Apache OpenOffice Suite.
Programmers who support the open source movement philosophy contribute to the open source community by voluntarily writing and exchanging programming code for software development. The term “open source” requires that no one can discriminate against a group in not sharing the edited code or hinder others from editing their already edited work. This approach to software development allows anyone to obtain and modify open source code. These modifications are distributed back to the developers within the open source community of people who are working with the software. In this way, the identities of all individuals participating in code modification are disclosed and the transformation of the code is documented over time. This method makes it difficult to establish ownership of a particular bit of code but is in keeping with the open source movement philosophy. These goals promote the production of “high quality programs” as well as “working cooperatively with other similarly minded people” to improve open source technologies.
Read more about Open Source Movement: Brief History, Evolution, Legal Issues, Formalization, Examples of Software That Have Come Out of The Open Source Movement, Strengths, Motivations of Programmers, Drawbacks, Evidence of Open Source Adoption, Ideologically Related Movements
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