Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines freeware unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification, redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software, which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models.
Viral license is an alternative name for copyleft licenses, especially the GPL, that allows derivative works only when permissions are preserved in modified versions of the work. Copyleft licenses include several common open-source and free content licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
In computing, cross-platform software is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software requires a separate build for each platform, but some can be directly run on any platform without special preparation, being written in an interpreted language or compiled to portable bytecode for which the interpreters or run-time packages are common or standard components of all supported platforms.
The Open Sound System (OSS) is an interface for making and capturing sound in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is based on standard Unix devices system calls. The term also sometimes refers to the software in a Unix kernel that provides the OSS interface; it can be thought of as a device driver for sound controller hardware. The goal of OSS is to allow the writing of sound-based applications that are agnostic of the underlying sound hardware.
BerliOS is a project founded by the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), Berlin, to coordinate the different interest groups in the field of open source software (OSS) and to assume a neutral coordinator function. The target groups of BerliOS were developers and users of open source software on the one side and OSS-related companies on the other. As of January 1, 2022 its website was still accessible, though hosting no projects.
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software.
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software. The term often implies not merely a development branch, but also a split in the developer community; as such, it is a form of schism. Grounds for forking are varying user preferences and stagnated or discontinued development of the original software.
Open-source software development (OSSD) is the process by which open-source software, or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project. These are software products available with its source code under an open-source license to study, change, and improve its design. Examples of some popular open-source software products are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, Android, LibreOffice and the VLC media player.
Alternative terms for free software, such as open source, FOSS, and FLOSS, have been a controversial issue among free and open-source software users from the late 1990s onwards. These terms share almost identical licence criteria and development practices.
Sunwah – PearL Linux is a joint venture of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Sunwah Group.
PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, macOS, as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operating system.
Group-Office is a PHP based dual license commercial/open source groupware and CRM and DMS product developed by the Dutch company Intermesh. The open source version, Group-Office Community, is licensed under the AGPL, and is available via SourceForge. GroupOffice Professional is a commercial product and offers additionally mobile synchronisation, project management and time tracking.
OSS Watch is the United Kingdom's advisory service for issues relating to free software and open source software, based at the University of Oxford.
The open-source-software movement is a movement that supports the use of open-source licenses for some or all software, as part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The open-source movement was started to spread the concept/idea of open-source software.
Open Source for America (OSFA) is a consortium of various organizations established to advocate for and support the use of free and open-source software in the U.S. Federal government. It consists of various open source foundations, and companies, including GNOME, Mozilla, and Canonical. The organization consists of various committees and working groups, one of which is Mil-OSS.
Anthony "Tony" I. Wasserman is an American computer scientist. He is a member of the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative, was a professor of the Practice in Software Management at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, and is executive director of the CMU Center for Open Source Investigation. He has been a SkyDeck accelerator program advisor at University of California, Berkeley since 2021.
The open-source-software movement is commonly cited to have a diversity problem. In some ways it reflects that of the general gender disparity in computing, but in general is assumed to be even more severe. The same can be extended to the racial and ethnic diversity of the movement. "Diversity" in this article uses the academic Critical Theory definition.
The Eclipse Adoptium Working Group is the successor of AdoptOpenJDK.
