The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative to determine whether or not a software license can be considered open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens. The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software. ... A screenshot of computer software in action. ... ... The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) are a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in the main, free software distribution of Debian. ... Bruce Perens is a prominent figure in the open source movement and to some extent in the free software movement. ...
Under the Open Source Definition, licenses must meet ten conditions in order to be considered open source licenses (Note: this version contains unauthorized additions. There is a link to the original unmodified text below. It was taken under fair use). The fair use doctrine is an aspect of United States copyright law that provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another authors work under a four-factor balancing test. ...
Free Redistribution: the software can be freely given away or sold.
Source Code: the source code must either be included or freely obtainable.
Derived Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed.
Integrity of The Author's Source Code: licenses may require that modifications are redistributed only as patches.
No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups: no-one can be locked out.
No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: commercial users cannot be excluded.
Distribution of License: The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
License Must Not Be Specific to a Product: the program cannot be licensed only as part of a larger distribution.
License Must Not Restrict Other Software: the license cannot insist that any other software it is distributed with must also be open source.
License Must Be Technology-Neutral: no click-wrap licenses or other medium-specific ways of accepting the license must be required.
Related to the Open Source Definition is the Free Software definition by the Free Software Foundation, which attempts to capture what is required for a program license to qualify as being free-libre software. In practice, licenses which meet the open source definition almost always also meet the Free software definition. All licenses reported to meet the free software definition as of 2006 also meet the open source definition. Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. ...
External links
The Open Source Definition
The Open Source Definition by Bruce Perens, Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, January 1999, ISBN 1-56592-582-3
Opensource politics — is a term used to describe a political process that uses Internet technologies such as blogs, email and polling to provide for a rapid feedback mechanism between political organizations and their supporters.
Opensource journalism — referred to the standard journalistic techniques of news gathering and fact checking, and reflected a similar term that was in use from 1992 in military intelligence circles, opensource intelligence.
Opensource movie production is either an open call system in which a changing crew and cast collaborate in movie production, a system in which the end result is made available for re-use by others or in which exclusively opensource products are used in the production.
Opensource usually refers to a program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design free of charge.
Opensource code is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community.
OpenSource is a certification standard issued by the OpenSource Initiative (OSI) that indicates that the source code of a computer program is made available free of charge to the general public.
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