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Portal:Free and open-source software

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Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is available under an open-source 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 also a loosely associated movement of multiple organizations, foundations, communities and individuals who share basic philosophical perspectives and collaborate practically, but might diverge in detail questions. The historical precursor to this was the hobbyist and academic public domain software ecosystem of the 1960s to 1980s. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software. FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software, which consists of software under restrictive copyright or licensing as well as software with undisclosed source code.

The rights granted to users of FOSS originate from the "Four Essential Freedoms" of the Free Software Definition and the criteria of The Open Source Definition. Other benefits of using FOSS include decreased software costs, increased security against malware, stability, privacy, opportunities for educational usage, and giving users more control over their own hardware. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used today, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones, and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-source licenses are used by many software packages today. The free software movement and the open-source software movement are online social movements behind widespread production, adoption and promotion of FOSS, with the former preferring to use the term free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS). (More about free and open-source software...)

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rio, default user interface of Plan 9 from Bell Labs

Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system which originated from the Computing Science Research Center (CSRC) at Bell Labs in the mid-1980s and built on UNIX concepts first developed there in the late 1960s. Since 2000, Plan 9 has been free and open-source. The final official release was in early 2015.

Under Plan 9, UNIX's everything is a file metaphor is extended via a pervasive network-centric filesystem, and the cursor-addressed, terminal-based I/O at the heart of UNIX-like operating systems is replaced by a windowing system and graphical user interface without cursor addressing, although rc, the Plan 9 shell, is text-based.

The name Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a reference to the Ed Wood 1957 cult science fiction Z-movie Plan 9 from Outer Space. The system continues to be used and developed by operating system researchers and hobbyists. (Full article...)

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Terminology

Alternative terms for free software, such as open source, FOSS, and FLOSS, have been a recurring issue among free and open-source software users from the late 1990s onwards. These terms share almost identical licence criteria and development practices.

In 1983 Richard Stallman launched the free software movement and founded the Free Software Foundation to promote the movement and to publish its own definition. Others have published alternative definitions of free software, notably the Debian Free Software Guidelines. In 1998, Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond began a campaign to market open-source software and founded the Open Source Initiative, which espoused different goals and a different philosophy from Stallman's. (Full article...)

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Operating systems

The following operating systems are released under free software licenses:

Mobile operating systems:


Desktop and server operating systems:


Linux systems focusing on free software:

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Topics
Impediments and challenges
Digital Millennium Copyright Act · Digital rights management · Tivoization · Software patents and free software · Trusted Computing · Proprietary software · SCO-Linux controversies · Binary blobs
Adoption issues
OpenDocument format · Vendor lock-in · GLX · Free standards · Free software adoption cases
About licences
Free software licences · Copyleft · List of FSF-approved software licenses
Common licences
GNU General Public License · GNU Lesser General Public License · GNU Affero General Public License · IBM Public License · Mozilla Public License · Permissive free software licences
History
...of free software · Free software movement · Timeline of free and open-source software
Groupings of software
Comparison of free software for audio · List of open-source video games
Naming issues
GNU/Linux naming controversy · Alternative terms for free software · Naming conflict between Debian and Mozilla

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Good articles

A number of articles on free and open-source software topics have been designated good articles:

Please consider improving other free and open-source software articles. With your attention, they could be added to this list!

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Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

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