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This is a list of notable software packages which were published as free and open-source software, or into the public domain, but were made proprietary software, or otherwise switched to a license (including source-available licenses) that is not considered to be free and open source.
Title | Orig. free date | License change date | Initial free license | Non-free license | Forked replacement | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Akka | 2009 | 2022 | Apache-2.0 | Business Source License [1] [2] | ||
ArangoDB | 2011 | 2023 | Apache-2.0 | Business Source License [3] | ||
Aseprite | 2001 | 2016 | GPL-2.0 | EULA that permits personal use but forbids redistribution [4] | LibreSprite | |
CockroachDB | 2015 | 2019 | Apache-2.0 | Business Source License [5] | ||
Consul | 2014 | 2023 [6] | MPL-2.0 | Business Source License [6] | ||
Couchbase Server | 2010 | 2021 | Apache-2.0 | Business Source License [7] | ||
Couchbase Mobile | 2022 [8] | Apache-2.0 | Business Source License [8] | |||
Elasticsearch | 2010 | 2021 | Apache-2.0 | "Elastic License" and Server Side Public License [9] [10] [11] | OpenSearch | |
Emby | 2014 | 2018 | GPL-2.0 | Source code closed on December 8, 2018. [12] | Jellyfin | |
FBReader | 2013 | 2015 | GPL-2.0-or-later | Apparently the number of devs was limited, and they all agreed to relicense it.[ citation needed ] | ||
LiveCode | 2013 | 2021 [13] | GPL-3.0-only | proprietary [13] | The Livecode company developed it, ran a Kickstarter campaign to GPL it, ran it for eight years open source, and then relicensed it back to proprietary, saying there were few other contributors, most were using the free GPL version, and they couldn't sustain the project. [13] | |
LiveJournal | 1999 | 2014 | GPL-2.0-or-later | The source code was made private in 2014. | Dreamwidth | |
MongoDB | 2009 | 2018 | AGPL-3.0-only | Server Side Public License [14] [15] | ||
Nexuiz | 2005 | 2012 | GPL-2.0-or-later | Game abandoned in favour of a commercial video game of the same name, which licensed the Nexuiz title but is not based on its engine. | Xonotic [16] | |
OctoberCMS | 2014 | 2021 | MIT | Cited the sustainability of its open source model as a factor. [17] | Winter [18] [19] | |
OTRS | 2001 | 2020 | GPL-3.0-or-later | Support for the Community Edition dropped on December 23, 2020, [20] | Znuny | |
Paint.NET | 2004 | 2007 | MIT | freeware license that prohibits modification or resale [21] | ||
PyMOL | 2000 | 2010 | MIT-CMU [22] | [23] [24] [25] [26] | ||
2008 | 2017 | CPAL-1.0 | Source code was made private in 2017, as the internal codebase had already diverged significantly from the public one. | |||
Redis | 2009 | 2024 | BSD-3-Clause | dual: custom license and Server Side Public License [27] | Valkey [28] | |
Sourcegraph | 2013 | 2023 | Apache-2.0 | proprietary [29] | ||
Terraform | 2014 | 2023 [6] | MPL-2.0 | Business Source License [6] | OpenTofu [30] | HashiCorp founder considered the move "tragic for open source innovation." [31] |
Tux Racer | 2000 | 2002 | GPL-2.0-or-later | Commercial expansion by original authors, also called Tux Racer. | Extreme Tux Racer (formerly PlanetPenguin Racer) | |
Vagrant | 2010 | 2023 [6] | MIT | Business Source License [6] |
The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, is termed free software.
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is available under a license that grants the right to use, modify, and distribute the software, modified or not, to everyone free of charge. The public availability of the source code is, therefore, a necessary but not sufficient condition. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software. FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users.
PyMOL is a source-available molecular visualization system created by Warren Lyford DeLano. It was commercialized initially by DeLano Scientific LLC, which was a private software company dedicated to creating useful tools that become universally accessible to scientific and educational communities. It is currently commercialized by Schrödinger, Inc. As the original software license was a permissive licence, they were able to remove it; new versions are no longer released under the Python license, but under a custom license, and some of the source code is no longer released. PyMOL can produce high-quality 3D images of small molecules and biological macromolecules, such as proteins. According to the original author, by 2009, almost a quarter of all published images of 3D protein structures in the scientific literature were made using PyMOL.
The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects.
A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically software under an open source license.
Benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) is a title given to a small number of open-source software development leaders, typically project founders who retain the final say in disputes or arguments within the community. The phrase originated in 1995 with reference to Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language.
RPM Package Manager (RPM) is a free and open-source package management system. The name RPM refers to the .rpm
file format and the package manager program itself. RPM was intended primarily for Linux distributions; the file format is the baseline package format of the Linux Standard Base.
Simon Phipps is a computer scientist and web and open source advocate.
Couchbase Server, originally known as Membase, is a source-available, distributed multi-model NoSQL document-oriented database software package optimized for interactive applications. These applications may serve many concurrent users by creating, storing, retrieving, aggregating, manipulating and presenting data. In support of these kinds of application needs, Couchbase Server is designed to provide easy-to-scale key-value, or JSON document access, with low latency and high sustainability throughput. It is designed to be clustered from a single machine to very large-scale deployments spanning many machines.
The open-core model is a business model for the monetization of commercially produced open-source software. The open-core model primarily involves offering a "core" or feature-limited version of a software product as free and open-source software, while offering "commercial" versions or add-ons as proprietary software. The term was coined by Andrew Lampitt in 2008.
Vagrant is a source-available software product for building and maintaining portable virtual software development environments; e.g., for VirtualBox, KVM, Hyper-V, Docker containers, VMware, Parallels, and AWS. It tries to simplify the software configuration management of virtualization in order to increase development productivity. Vagrant is written in the Ruby language, but its ecosystem supports development in a few other languages.
Rolling release, also known as rolling update or continuous delivery, is a concept in software development of frequently delivering updates to applications. This is in contrast to a standard or point release development model which uses software versions which replace the previous version. An example of this difference would be the multiple versions of Ubuntu Linux vis-à-vis the single and constantly updated version of Arch Linux.
Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code software tool created by HashiCorp. Users define and provide data center infrastructure using a declarative configuration language known as HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), or optionally JSON.
Microsoft, a technology company historically known for its opposition to the open source software paradigm, turned to embrace the approach in the 2010s. From the 1970s through 2000s under CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft viewed the community creation and sharing of communal code, later to be known as free and open source software, as a threat to its business, and both executives spoke negatively against it. In the 2010s, as the industry turned towards cloud, embedded, and mobile computing—technologies powered by open source advances—CEO Satya Nadella led Microsoft towards open source adoption although Microsoft's traditional Windows business continued to grow throughout this period generating revenues of 26.8 billion in the third quarter of 2018, while Microsoft's Azure cloud revenues nearly doubled.
Collabora Online is an open source online office suite built on LibreOffice Technology, enabling web-based collaborative real-time editing of word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and vector graphics. Optional apps are available for desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and Chromebooks.
The Server Side Public License (SSPL) is a source-available copyleft software license introduced by MongoDB Inc. in 2018.
AlmaLinux is a free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, a 501(c) organization, to provide a community-supported, production-grade enterprise operating system that is binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The name of the distribution comes from the word "alma", meaning "soul" in Spanish and other Latin languages. It was chosen to be a homage to the Linux community.
Aseprite is a proprietary, source-available image editor designed primarily for pixel art drawing and animation. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and features different tools for image and animation editing such as layers, frames, tilemap support, command-line interface, Lua scripting, among others. It is developed by Igara Studio S.A. and led by the developers David, Gaspar, and Martín Capello. Aseprite can be downloaded as freeware, or purchased on Steam or Itch.io. Aseprite source code and binaries are distributed under EULA, educational, and Steam proprietary licenses.
Open-Source Philosophy
PyMOL is a commercial product, but we make most of its source code freely available under a permissive license. The open source project is maintained by Schrödinger and ultimately funded by everyone who purchases a PyMOL license.
Open source enables open science.
This was the vision of the original PyMOL author Warren L. DeLano.