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Free and open source software
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Free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS (for Free/Libre/Open Source Software) is software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporate players.
'F/OSS' is an inclusive term generally synonymous with both free software and open source software which describe similar development models, but with differing cultures and philosophies.
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Encyclopedia
Free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS (for Free/Libre/Open Source Software) is software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporate players.
'F/OSS' is an inclusive term generally synonymous with both free software and open source software which describe similar development models, but with differing cultures and philosophies. 'Free software' focuses on the philosophical freedoms it gives to users and 'open source' focuses on the perceived strengths of its peer-to-peer development model. Many people relate to both aspects and so 'F/OSS' is a term that can be used without particular bias towards either camp.
Free software licenses and Open-source licenses are used by many software packages. The licenses have important differences, which mirror the differences in the ways the two kinds of software can be used and distributed and reflect differences in the philosophy behind the two.
Today the terms "free software" and "free open source software" (FOSS) and "free libre open source software" (FLOSS) generally mean the same thing. Despite disagreements about independently important but relatively minor differences, the simple term "open source" originally had the same meaning as FOSS/FLOSS for several years, nicely guarded, but not trademarked, by the Open Source Initiative. However, by enough companies were opening some source to hop on the open source bandwagon, while keeping other advanced functionality closed, that the common meaning of "open source" came to include what is now called "Commercial Open Source Software" (COSS) as well. Today either the specific terms free software/FOSS/FLOSS or COSS are often used instead of the more general term "open source" in order to differentiate between the two different models and preserve the original meaning of the free software/FOSS/FLOSS space.
Industry support
In January 2008 Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced software governance initiative to address the legal, financial and security risks connected with the adoption of FOSS. The project is supported by other companies like OpenLogic, Google and Novell. HP generated over USD$10 billion revenue on sales of open source-related products in the past few years. More than 22 percent of shipped units and 17 percent of the company's server revenues came from this source in the last two quarters of 2008. FOSSology is a tool for tracking and monitoring the use of free and open-source software within an IT environment and is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License (version 2), FOSSBazaar is a web site that hosts discussion groups and information resources on how to adopt and manage free/open source code.
See also
Further reading
External links
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- — community for free and open source software governance
- (mit.edu)
- - Wiki on FOSS history, organizations, licenses, people, software.
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