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Permissive-licensed software, which is a kind of free and open-source software, shares most characteristics of earlier public-domain software but stands on the legal basis of copyright law. In the 1980s Richard Stallman , who for long worked in an academic environment of "public-domain"-like software sharing, noticed the emergence of ...
Free and open-source software (FOSS) or free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) is openly shared source code that is licensed without any restrictions on usage, modification, or distribution. [ citation needed ] Confusion persists about this definition because the "free", also known as "libre", refers to the freedom of the product, not the ...
Wikipedia [a] is a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history, [ 1 ] [ 2 ] and is consistently ranked among the ten most visited websites ; as of December ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 27 January 2025. Software licensed to ensure source code usage rights Open-source software shares similarities with free software and is part of the broader term free and open-source software. For broader coverage of this topic, see open-source-software movement. A screenshot of Manjaro linux running the ...
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software – modified or not – to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free software and open-source software .
Eric S. Raymond was a proponent of the term "open source" over "free software". He viewed open source as more appealing to businesses and more reflective of the tangible advantages of FOSS development. One of Raymond's goals was to expand the existing hacker community to include large commercial developers. [24]
Free software and/or open-source software is also always source-available software, but not all source-available software is also free software and/or open-source software. This is because the official definitions of those terms require considerable additional rights as to what the user can do with the available source (including, typically ...
"Free and open-source software" (FOSS) is an umbrella term for software that is considered free software and/or open-source software. [1] The precise definition of the terms "free software" and "open-source software" applies them to any software distributed under terms that allow users to use, modify, and redistribute said software in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay ...