Free and open-source software
(
FOSS
) is
software
that is distributed in a manner that allows its users to
run
the software for any purpose, to redistribute copies of it, and to examine, study, and modify, the
source code
. 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. The FOSS movement's "free" part originates from
Richard Matthew Stallman
, who noted the
lost freedom
to users on the decline of the public domain ecosystem and the growth of a
copyrighted
proprietary software
ecosystem.
In response, as a hack of the copyright system, he created the GPL, a
protective copyleft license
, aiming for the creation of a complete and
free
operating system
?
GNU
. Shortly after, the BSDs (
FreeBSD
,
OpenBSD
,
NetBSD
) brought an alternative FOSS approach to the table: the more public domain?like
permissive licenses
. Other noteworthy FOSS organizations from this time include the
Apache Foundation
(
Apache Server
),
GNOME
,
Debian
,
Mozilla Foundation
(
Firefox
), with their own ideas:
The Free Software Definition
,
Debian Free Software Guidelines
,
The Open Source Definition
, and more.
At the end of the 1990s, in the context of the
dot-com bubble
and
web 2.0
, the
Open-Source movement
(with
Eric S. Raymond
,
Bruce Perens
,
Tim O'Reilly
and others) gave important impulses to FOSS with the achieved open sourcing of
Netscape
's browser as
Firefox
and
Sun Microsystems
' office suite,
OpenOffice.org
.
The incorporation of
Linus Torvalds
'
Linux
kernel in FOSS OS paved the way to broad mainstream recognition and acceptance of FOSS in the IT domain and among the general public. In the 2010s
GitHub
's openness and collaboration encouraging software repository
cloud service
brought FOSS software development & maintenance methodologies to mainstream software development.
The FOSS movement inspired the creation of other movements, such as
open access
,
open hardware
,
open content
,
free culture
,
open standards
, and
many more
.