IntroductionIntroduction
Open-source software is software with available source code that can be used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone. Open-source software is made by many people, and distributed under licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition. Some of the "more prominent organizations" involved in OSS development include the Apache Software Foundation, creators of the Apache web server; the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit which as of 2012 employed Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system kernel; Google, the company behind the Android project; Oracle, the company behind Java; the Eclipse Foundation, home of the Eclipse software development platform; the Mozilla Foundation, home of the Firefox web browser.
TerminologyTerminology
The free software movement was launched in 1983. In 1998, a group of individuals advocated that the term free software should be replaced by open-source software (OSS) as an expression which is less ambiguous and more comfortable for the corporate world. Software developers may want to publish their software with an open-source license, so that anybody may also develop the same software or understand its internal functioning.
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