Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software

Joseph Feller, Professor, University College Cork, Ireland, Brian Fitzgerald, Fellow, University of Limerick, Ireland, Scott Hissam, Senir member of the technical staff at Carnegie Mellon University, and Karim Lakhani, MIT doctoral candidate

2/06/2008
(Original Publish Date: 2/1/2005)

Briefly stated, the terms "free software" and "open source software" refer to software products distributed under terms that allow users to: Use the software, Modify the software, Redistribute the software in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay the author(s) of the software a royalty or fee for engaging in the listed activities. In general, such terms of distribution also protect what the publishing world calls the "moral right" of the software’s author(s) to be identified as such. Products such as the GNU/Linux operating system, the Apache Web server, the Mozilla Web browser, the PHP programming language, and the OpenOffice productivity suite are all well-known examples of this kind of software.