Open-source films (also known as open-content films and free-content films) are films which are produced and distributed by using free and open-source and open content methodologies. Their sources are freely available and the licenses used meet the demands of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in terms of freedom.
A definition of an open-source film is based on the OSI's open-source software definition [1] and the definition of free cultural licenses. [2] This definition can be applied to films where:
Films or film projects which do not meet these criteria are either not open source or partially open source.
| Name | Type | Released | CC License | Sources | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dancing to Architecture – a motion picture about TINA | Documentary | 2002 | by 2.5 AU | Collaborative production. Vital Focus 2002. | |
| Route 66 - An American Nightmare | road movie / gonzo-documentary | 12/2004 | by-sa 3.0 | link streaming torrent | Became popular as Germany's first open-source film. The license changed to CC by-sa in July 2009. |
| Elephants Dream | animated short | 04/2006 | by 2.5 | Created with the Blender open-source software. | |
| Stray Cinema | Short Film/ Remix project | 2006 | by 3.0 | Collaborative project | |
| .re_potemkin | contemporary art project | 2007 | A remake of Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" using crowdsourcing / peer production method. | ||
| Big Buck Bunny | animated short | 08/2008 | by 3.0 | Created with the Blender Open Source Software. | |
| Jathia's Wager | short film | 02/2009 | by-sa 3.0 | Sources only consist of the movie without music score. | |
| Sita Sings the Blues | animated musical of the Indian epic the Ramayana | 2009 | CC0 1.0 | ||
| Valkaama | full feature | 01/2010 | by-sa 3.0 | Collaborative project. HD download available (720p and 1080p) | |
| The Digital Tipping Point | documentary | in production | by-sa | Collaborative project. | |
| Sintel | animated short | 10/2010 | by 3.0 | Created with the Blender Open Source Software. | |
| La Chute d'une plume (pèse plus que ta pudeur) | animated short | 10/2010 | by-sa 3.0 | Created with the Kdenlive Open Source Software. | |
| original source footage of Tears of Steel | reference material for easing technical development of movie technology | 2013-03-15 [3] | CC-by (no usage of actor footage for commercials) | This is a first time addressing of the huge lack in available free high quality footage for motion tracking, keying and cleaning testing. The material was recorded with the Sony F65 camera (4k native sensor, see also Ultra HD) and is formed by roughly 80,000 frames, each in OpenEXR half float files, in 4096 x 2160 pixels. This is 5 times more footage than used in the film. For the movie production the format encoding Rec709 “scene linear” was used in the processing pipeline. |
Free software, libre software, or libreware is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.
The Free Software Definition written by Richard Stallman and published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), defines free software as being software that ensures that the users have freedom in using, studying, sharing and modifying that software. The term "free" is used in the sense of "free speech," not of "free of charge." The earliest-known publication of the definition was in the February 1986 edition of the now-
Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition.
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that the author has created. CC provides an author flexibility and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.
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.
The Apple Public Source License (APSL) is the open-source and free software license under which Apple's Darwin operating system was released in 2000. A free and open-source software license was voluntarily adopted to further involve the community from which much of Darwin originated.
The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's original creators, by using the Internet and other forms of media.
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.
This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.
License proliferation is the phenomenon of an abundance of already existing and the continued creation of new software licenses for software and software packages in the FOSS ecosystem. License proliferation affects the whole FOSS ecosystem negatively by the burden of increasingly complex license selection, license interaction, and license compatibility considerations.
Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of functional work, work of art, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work, meaning "works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose."
A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms.
Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, freedoms refers to the use of the work for any purpose, and the ability to modify, copy, share, and redistribute the work, with or without a fee. Licenses which implement copyleft can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works ranging from computer software, to documents, art, scientific discoveries and even certain patents.
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities, the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.
The Definition of Free Cultural Works evaluates and recommends compatible free content licenses.
The Shared Source Initiative (SSI) is a source-available software licensing scheme launched by Microsoft in May 2001. The program includes a spectrum of technologies and licenses, and most of its source code offerings are available for download after eligibility criteria are met.
The MirOS Licence is a free content licence originated at The MirOS Project for their own publications because the ISC license used by OpenBSD was perceived as having problems with wording and too America centric. It has strong roots in the UCB BSD licence and the Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer with a focus on modern, explicit, legible language and usability by European, specifically German, authors. It is a permissive ("BSD/MIT-style") licence.
A free license or open license is a license which allows others to reuse another creator’s work as they wish. Without a special license, these uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or commercial license. Most free licenses are worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and perpetual. Free licenses are often the basis of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding projects.
A public license or public copyright licenses is a license by which a copyright holder as licensor can grant additional copyright permissions to any and all persons in the general public as licensees. By applying a public license to a work, provided that the licensees obey the terms and conditions of the license, copyright holders give permission for others to copy or change their work in ways that would otherwise infringe copyright law.
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery.
