The Sybase Open Watcom Public License is a software license that has been approved by the Open Source Initiative . It is the licence under which the Open Watcom C/C++ compiler is released.
68-516: The license has not been accepted as "free" under the Debian Free Software Guidelines , due to the license's termination clauses. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has stated that the license is not "free" as it requires the source to be published when you "deploy" the software for private use only. In contrast, FSF's General Public License (GPL) does not require that a modified source code has to be made public when
136-406: A Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program to support open source innovation. The adoption of open-source software by industry is increasing over time. OSS is popular in several industries such as telecommunications , aerospace , healthcare , and media & entertainment due to the benefits it provides. Adoption of OSS is more likely in larger organizations and is dependent on
204-544: A bug needs to be fixed in their project. This is established by communicating with the OSS community through avenues such as bug reporting and tracking or mailing lists and project pages. Next, OSS developers select or are assigned to a task and identify a solution. Because there are often many different possible routes for solutions in OSS, the best solution must be chosen with careful consideration and sometimes even peer feedback . The developer then begins to develop and commit
272-517: A copy of the license is provided to recipients with the code. One important legal precedent for open-source software was created in 2008, when the Jacobson v Katzer case enforced terms of the Artistic license , including attribution and identification of modifications. The ruling of this case cemented enforcement under copyright law when the conditions of the license were not followed. Because of
340-518: A month-long discussion on a private mailing list, as part of the larger Debian Social Contract. Perens was copied to an email discussion between Ean Schuessler (then of Debian) and Donnie Barnes of Red Hat, in which Schuessler accused Red Hat of never elucidating its social contract with the Linux community. Perens realized that Debian did not have any formal social contract either, and immediately started creating one. The (then) Three Freedoms, which preceded
408-454: A new bug. Early releases : The first version of the software should be released as early as possible so as to increase one's chances of finding co-developers early. Frequent integration: Code changes should be integrated (merged into a shared code base) as often as possible so as to avoid the overhead of fixing a large number of bugs at the end of the project life cycle. Some open-source projects have nightly builds where integration
476-508: A public good as it is available to everyone and does not decrease in value for others when downloaded by one person. Open source software is unique in that it becomes more valuable as it is used and contributed to, instead of diminishing the resource. This is explained by concepts such as investment in reputation and network effects . The economic model of open-source software can be explained as developers contribute work to projects, creating public benefits. Developers choose projects based on
544-447: A similar way user scripts and custom style sheets allow for web sites, and eventually publish the modification as a fork for users with similar preferences, and directly submit possible improvements as pull requests . The Open Source Initiative 's (OSI) definition is recognized by several governments internationally as the standard or de facto definition. OSI uses The Open Source Definition to determine whether it considers
612-529: A software license open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines , written and adapted primarily by Perens . Perens did not base his writing on the "four freedoms" from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which were only widely available later. Under Perens' definition, open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on
680-422: A victory for OSS supporters. In open-source communities, instead of owning the software produced, the producer owns the development of the evolving software. In this way, the future of the software is open, making ownership or intellectual property difficult within OSS. Licensing and branding can prevent others from stealing it, preserving its status as a public good . Open source software can be considered
748-404: Is a good or service, what can be considered a modification, governance through contract vs license, ownership and right of use. While there have been developments on these issues, they often lead to even more questions. The existence of these uncertainties in regulation has a negative impact on industries involved in technologies as a whole. Within the legal history of software as a whole, there
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#1732801577613816-556: Is absolutely another terrific way that individuals and organizations choose to contribute to open source projects. Groups like Open Collective provide a means for individuals to contribute monthly to supporting their favorite projects. Organizations like the Sovereign Tech Fund is able to contribute to millions to supporting the tools the German Government uses. The National Science Foundation established
884-431: Is available under a Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) license. It covers both copyleft —where redistribution and derivative works must be released under a free license—and permissive licenses —where derivative works can be released under any license. It is part of the open source movement rather than the free software movement, and seeks to promote the availability of open-source software for anyone seeking to reuse it, even
952-614: Is discussed by the OSI mailing list before it is approved or rejected by the OSI board. Seven approved licenses are particularly recommended by the OSI as "popular, widely used, or having strong communities": Most discussions about the DFSG happen on the debian-legal mailing list. When a Debian Developer first uploads a package for inclusion in Debian, the ftpmaster team checks the software licenses and determines whether they are in accordance with
1020-544: Is done automatically . Several versions: There should be at least two versions of the software. There should be a buggier version with more features and a more stable version with fewer features. The buggy version (also called the development version) is for users who want the immediate use of the latest features and are willing to accept the risk of using code that is not yet thoroughly tested. The users can then act as co-developers, reporting bugs and providing bug fixes. High modularization: The general structure of
1088-404: Is innovative since open-source programs are the product of collaboration among a large number of different programmers. The mix of divergent perspectives, corporate objectives, and personal goals speeds up innovation. Moreover, free software can be developed in accordance with purely technical requirements. It does not require thinking about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of
1156-560: Is legal variety in this definition. Some jurisdictions attempt to expand or reduce this conceptualization for their own purposes. For example, The European Court of Justice defines a computer program as not including the functionality of a program, the programing language , or the format of data files. By limiting protections of the different aspects of software, the law favors an open-source approach to software use. The US especially has an open approach to software, with most open-source licenses originating there. However, this has increased
1224-415: 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
1292-418: Is the most widely used definition for open-source software , and is often used as a standard for whether a project is open source. It and the official definitions of free software by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) essentially cover the same software licenses . Nevertheless, there is a values difference between the free software and open source movements: the former is more based on ethics and values,
1360-468: Is theoretically challenging in economic models, it is explainable as a sustainable social activity that requires resources. These resources include time, money, technology and contributions. Many developers have used technology funded by organizations such as universities and governments, though these same organizations benefit from the work done by OSS. As OSS grows, hybrid systems containing OSS and proprietary systems are becoming more common. Throughout
1428-637: The GNU Free Documentation License contain invariant sections , which do not comply with the DFSG. This assertion is the end result of a long discussion and the General Resolution 2006-001. Due to the GFDL invariant sections, content under this license must be separately contained in an additional "non-free" repository which is not officially considered part of Debian. It can be sometimes hard to define what constitutes
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#17328015776131496-561: The Open Source Initiative (OSI) as the Open Source Definition. The OSI uses the label "open source", rather than "free software", because it felt that the latter term had undesirable ideological and political freight, and it wanted to focus on the pragmatic and business-friendly arguments for open-source software . It adopted a closed rather than membership-driven organizational model in order to draft
1564-889: The distributed version control system (DVCS) are examples of tools, often open source, that help manage the source code files and the changes to those files for a software project in order to foster collaboration. CVCS are centralized with a central repository while DVCS are decentralized and have a local repository for every user. concurrent versions system (CVS) and later Subversion (SVN) and Git are examples of CVCS. The repositories are hosted and published on source-code-hosting facilities such as GitHub . Open-source projects use utilities such as issue trackers to organize open-source software development. Commonly used bug trackers include Bugzilla and Redmine . Tools such as mailing lists and IRC provide means of coordination and discussion of bugs among developers. Project web pages, wiki pages, roadmap lists and newsgroups allow for
1632-417: The "source" for multimedia files, such as whether an uncompressed image file is the source of a compressed image and whether the 3D model before ray tracing is the source for its resulting image. The debian-legal mailing list subscribers have created some tests to check whether a license violates the DFSG. The common tests (as described in the draft DFSG FAQ) are the following: The Open Source Definition
1700-462: The Bazaar , open-source influential contributor Eric S. Raymond suggests a model for developing OSS known as the bazaar model. Raymond likens the development of software by traditional methodologies to building a cathedral, with careful isolated work by individuals or small groups. He suggests that all software should be developed using the bazaar style, with differing agendas and approaches. In
1768-641: The Public Interest . Within Europe some notable organizations are Free Software Foundation Europe , open-source projects EU (OSP) and OpenForum Europe (OFE). One Australian organization is Linux Australia while Asia has Open source Asia and FOSSAsia . Free and open source software for Africa (FOSSFA) and OpenAfrica are African organizations and Central and South Asia has such organizations as FLISOL and GRUP de usuarios de software libre Peru . Outside of these, many more organizations dedicated to
1836-582: The United States has focused on national security in regard to open-source software implementation due to the perceived threat of the increase of open-source software activity in countries like China and Russia, with the Department of Defense considering multiple criteria for using OSS. These criteria include: if it comes from and is maintained by trusted sources, whether it will continue to be maintained, if there are dependencies on sub-components in
1904-473: The advancement of open-source software exist. FOSS products are generally licensed under two types of licenses: permissive licensing and copyleft licensing . Both of these types of licenses are different than proprietary licensing in that they can allow more users access to the software and allow for the creation of derivative works as specified by the terms of the specific license, as each license has its own rules. Permissive licenses allow recipients of
1972-402: The bazaar model should exhibit the following patterns: Users should be treated as co-developers: The users are treated like co-developers and so they should have access to the source code of the software. Furthermore, users are encouraged to submit additions to the software, code fixes for the software, bug reports , documentation, etc. Having more co-developers increases the rate at which
2040-414: The code. The code is then tested and reviewed by peers. Developers can edit and evolve their code through feedback from continuous integration . Once the leadership and community are satisfied with the whole project, it can be partially released and user instruction can be documented. If the project is ready to be released, it is frozen, with only serious bug fixes or security repairs occurring. Finally,
2108-427: The company's IT usage, operating efficiencies, and the productivity of employees. Industries are likely to use OSS due to back-office functionality, sales support, research and development, software features, quick deployment, portability across platforms and avoidance of commercial license management. Additionally, lower cost for hardware and ownership are also important benefits. Organizations that contribute to
Sybase Open Watcom Public License - Misplaced Pages Continue
2176-653: The confusion, in June 2004 the Debian project decided to explicitly apply the same principles to software documentation , multimedia data and other content. The non-program content of Debian began to comply with the DFSG more strictly in Debian 4.0 (released in April 2007) and subsequent releases. Much documentation written by the GNU Project , the Linux Documentation Project and others licensed under
2244-489: The date of the initial release of Open Watcom C/C++ . The draft of version 2.0 of the License was published on 20 January 2004 . This version incorporated changes from Apple and made the licence less specific to OpenWatcom. Debian Free Software Guidelines The Open Source Definition ( OSD ) is a document published by the Open Source Initiative . Derived from Bruce Perens ' Debian Free Software Guidelines ,
2312-526: The definition and work together with a wider variety of stakeholders than other free or open-source projects. Once the DFSG became the Open Source Definition, Richard Stallman saw the need to differentiate free software from open source and promoted the Free Software Definition. In November 1998, Ian Jackson and others proposed several changes in a draft versioned 1.4, but the changes were never made official. Jackson stated that
2380-529: The definition is the most common standard for open-source software . The definition has ten criteria, such as requiring freely accessed source code and granting the open-source rights to everyone who receives a copy of the program. Covering both copyleft and permissive licenses , it is effectively identical to the definition of free software , but motivated by more pragmatic and business-friendly considerations. The Open Source Initiative's board votes on proposals of licenses to certify that they are compliant with
2448-480: The definition, and maintains a list of compliant licenses on its website. The definition has been adapted into the Open Knowledge Foundation 's Open Definition for open knowledge and into open hardware definitions. There have been several attempts to define open source and free software. Amongst the earliest was Free Software Foundation 's Free Software Definition , which then defined as
2516-403: The development and expansions of free and open-source software movements exist all over the world. These organizations are dedicated to goals such as teaching and spreading technology. As listed by a former vice president of the Open Source Initiative , some American organizations include the Free Software Foundation , Software Freedom Conservancy , the Open Source Initiative and Software in
2584-461: The distribution of project information that focuses on end users. The basic roles OSS participants can fall into multiple categories, beginning with leadership at the center of the project who have control over its execution. Next are the core contributors with a great deal of experience and authority in the project who may guide the other contributors. Non-core contributors have less experience and authority, but regularly contribute and are vital to
2652-410: The drafting and promulgation of the DFSG, were unknown to its authors. The guidelines were: As Netscape released the open-source Mozilla browser in 1998, Bruce Perens again drafted a set of open-source guidelines to go with the release. It has been claimed that the Open Source Definition was created by re-titling the exact text of the DFSG. A modified version of this definition was adopted by
2720-601: The focus on patent rights within these licenses, which has seen backlash from the OSS community, who prefer other forms of IP protection. Another issue includes technological protection measures (TPM) and digital rights management (DRM) techniques which were internationally legally recognized and protected in the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Treaty . Open source software proponents disliked these technologies as they constrained end-users potentially beyond copyright law. Europe responded to such complaints by putting TPM under legal controls, representing
2788-405: The history with auto-selected revisions . Note to the requestor : Make sure the page has already been reverted to a non-infringing revision or that infringing text has been removed or replaced before submitting this request. This template is reserved for obvious cases only, for other cases refer to Misplaced Pages:Copyright problems . Open-source software ( OSS ) is computer software that
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2856-454: The latter on pragmatism. The Open Knowledge Foundation 's Open Definition is substantially derivative of the Open Source Definition. The Open Source Hardware Statement of Principles is adapted from the Open Source Definition. Open-source software This is an accepted version of this page Note to admins : In case of doubt, remove this template and post a message asking for review at WT:CP . With this script , go to
2924-413: The makers of proprietary software . It does not address warranty disclaimers, although these are very common in open-source software. The definition does not specify a governance structure for open-source projects. The criteria are used by the OSI to approve certain licenses as compatible with the definition, and maintain a list of compliant licenses. New licenses have to submit a formal proposal that
2992-480: The many benefits provided, a huge issue to be considered is cybersecurity . While accidental vulnerabilities are possible, so are attacks by outside agents. Because of these fears, governmental interest in contributing to the governance of software has become more prominent. However, these are the broad strokes of the issue, with each country having their own specific politicized interactions with open-source software and their goals for its implementation. For example,
3060-560: The mid 2000s, more and more tech companies have begun to use OSS. For example, Dell's move of selling computers with GNU/Linux already installed. Microsoft itself has launched a Linux-based operating system despite previous animosity with the OSS movement. Despite these developments, these companies tend to only use OSS for certain purposes, leading to worries that OSS is being taken advantage of by corporations and not given anything in return. While many governments are interested in implementing and promoting open-source software due to
3128-508: The number of people employed in the IT sector. OSS can be highly reliable when it has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software. Open source is not dependent on the company or author that originally created it. Even if the company fails, the code continues to exist and be developed by its users. OSS is flexible because modular systems allow programmers to build custom interfaces, or add new abilities to it and it
3196-537: The number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software. Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. A 2024 estimate of the value of open-source software to firms is $ 8.8 trillion, as firms would need to spend 3.5 times the amount they currently do without the use of open source software. Open-source code can be used for studying and allows capable end users to adapt software to their personal needs in
3264-435: The perceived benefits or costs, such as improved reputation or value of the project. The motivations of developers can come from many different places and reasons, but the important takeaway is that money is not the only or even most important incentivization . Because economic theory mainly focuses on the consumption of scarce resources, the OSS dynamic can be hard to understand. In OSS, producers become consumers by reaping
3332-404: The potential to quicken innovation and create of social value. In France for instance, a policy that incentivized government to favor free open-source software increased to nearly 600,000 OSS contributions per year, generating social value by increasing the quantity and quality of open-source software. This policy also led to an estimated increase of up to 18% of tech startups and a 14% increase in
3400-574: The problems were "loose wording" and the patch clause. The Debian General Resolution 2004-003, titled "Editorial amendments to the social contract", modified the Social Contract. The proposer Andrew Suffield stated: However, the change of the sentence "We promise to keep the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution entirely free software" into "We promise that the Debian system and all its components will be free" resulted in
3468-574: The project is fully released and only changed through minor bug fixes. Open source implementation of a standard can increase adoption of that standard. This creates developer loyalty as developers feel empowered and have a sense of ownership of the end product. Moreover, lower costs of marketing and logistical services are needed for OSS. OSS can be a tool to promote a company's image, including its commercial products. The OSS development approach has helped produce reliable, high quality software quickly and inexpensively. Open source development offers
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#17328015776133536-759: The project's development. New contributors are the least experienced but with mentorship and guidance can become regular contributors. Some possible ways of contributing to open-source software include such roles as programming , user interface design and testing, web design , bug triage , accessibility design and testing, UX design , code testing, and security review and testing. However, there are several ways of contributing to OSS projects even without coding skills. For example, some less technical ways of participating are documentation writing and editing, translation , project management , event organization and coordination, marketing, release management, community management, and public relations and outreach. Funding
3604-499: The release manager, Anthony Towns, making a practical change: This prompted another General Resolution, 2004–004, in which the developers voted overwhelmingly against immediate action, and decided to postpone those changes until the next release (whose development started a year later, in June 2005). Providing access to the source code is not enough for software to be considered "open-source". The Open Source Definition requires that ten criteria be met: The Open Source Definition
3672-431: The rewards of contributing to a project. For example, a developer becomes well regarded by their peers for a successful contribution to an OSS project. The social benefits and interactions of OSS are difficult to account for in economic models as well. Furthermore, the innovation of technology creates constantly changing value discussions and outlooks, making economic model unable to predict social behavior. Although OSS
3740-496: The same license while weak copyleft licenses require the use of the same license only under certain conditions. Examples of this type of license include the GNU family of licenses , and the MPL and EPL licenses. The similarities between these two categories of licensing include that they provide a broad grant of copyright rights, require that recipients preserve copyright notices, and that
3808-500: The similarity of the Artistic license to other open-source software licenses, the ruling created a precedent that applied widely. Examples of free-software license / open-source licenses include Apache licenses , BSD licenses , GNU General Public Licenses , GNU Lesser General Public License , MIT License , Eclipse Public License and Mozilla Public License . Several gray areas exist within software regulation that have great impact on open-source software, such as if software
3876-434: The social contract. The team sometimes confers with the debian-legal list in difficult cases. The DFSG is focused on software, but the word itself is unclear—some apply it to everything that can be expressed as a stream of bits, while a minority considers it to refer to just computer programs. Also, the existence of PostScript , executable scripts, sourced documents , etc., greatly muddies the second definition. Thus, to break
3944-488: 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." Despite initially accepting it, Richard Stallman of the FSF now flatly opposes the term "Open Source" being applied to what they refer to as "free software". Although he agrees that the two terms describe "almost the same category of software", Stallman considers equating
4012-401: The software evolves. Linus's law states that given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow. This means that if many users view the source code, they will eventually find all bugs and suggest how to fix them. Some users have advanced programming skills, and furthermore, each user's machine provides an additional testing environment. This new testing environment offers the ability to find and fix
4080-564: The software modification was only used privately without a public release of the software. This makes the Watcom license also GPL incompatible and a stronger copyleft license than the GPL and even the AGPL . The Fedora project also considers the license as non-free, citing the FSF argumentation. Version 1.0 appears to have been written in 2002. It's publicly released no later than January 8, 2003,
4148-484: The software should be modular allowing for parallel development on independent components. Dynamic decision-making structure: There is a need for a decision-making structure, whether formal or informal, that makes strategic decisions depending on changing user requirements and other factors. Compare with extreme programming . The process of Open source development begins with a requirements elicitation where developers consider if they should add new features or if
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#17328015776134216-456: The software to implement the author's copyright rights without having to use the same license for distribution. Examples of this type of license include the BSD , MIT , and Apache licenses . Copyleft licenses are different in that they require recipients to use the same license for at least some parts of the distribution of their works. Strong copyleft licenses require all derivative works to use
4284-425: The software. Commercial pressures make traditional software developers pay more attention to customers' requirements than to security requirements, since such features are somewhat invisible to the customer. In open-source software development, tools are used to support the development of the product and the development process itself. Version control systems such as Centralized Version control system (CVCS) and
4352-597: The terms incorrect and misleading. Stallman also opposes the professed pragmatism of the Open Source Initiative , as he fears that the free software ideals of freedom and community are threatened by compromising on the FSF's idealistic standards for software freedom. The FSF considers free software to be a subset of open-source software, and Richard Stallman explained that DRM software, for example, can be developed as open source, despite that it does not give its users freedom (it restricts them), and thus does not qualify as free software. In his 1997 essay The Cathedral and
4420-546: The three freedoms of Free Software (Freedom Zero was added later). Published versions of FSF's Free Software Definition existed as early as 1986, having been published in the first edition of the (now defunct) GNU's Bulletin. The DFSG was first published together with the first version of the Debian Social Contract in July 1997. The primary author was Bruce Perens , with input from the Debian developers during
4488-514: The traditional model of development, which he called the cathedral model, development takes place in a centralized way. Roles are clearly defined. Roles include people dedicated to designing (the architects), people responsible for managing the project, and people responsible for implementation. Traditional software engineering follows the cathedral model. The bazaar model, however, is different. In this model, roles are not clearly defined. Some proposed characteristics of software developed using
4556-437: The use and modification of the code. It is an explicit "feature" of open source that it puts very few restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user, in order to enable the rapid evolution of the software. According to Feller et al. (2005), the terms "free software" and "open-source software" should be applied to any "software products distributed under terms that allow users" to use, modify, and redistribute
4624-404: Was much debate on whether to protect it as intellectual property under patent law , copyright law or establishing a unique regulation. Ultimately, copyright law became the standard with computer programs being considered a form of literary work, with some tweaks of unique regulation. Software is generally considered source code and object code , with both being protectable, though there
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