Open-source software movement
The open-source software movement is a social movement that supports the use of open-source licenses for some or all software, as part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The movement emerged to promote the development and adoption of open-source software.
Programmers participating in the open-source movement contribute to software development through voluntary collaboration and code sharing. Open-source licenses typically require that source code be made available without restrictions on modification or redistribution, and prohibit discrimination against individuals or groups. Under this development model, anyone can obtain, modify, and redistribute open-source code. Modifications are typically shared with the broader community, creating a collaborative development process where contributions are tracked and attributed. This collaborative approach differs from proprietary software development models in its emphasis on transparency and community participation.
Brief history
The label open source was created and adopted by a group of people in the free software movement at a strategy session held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source-code release for Navigator. One of the reasons behind using the term was that "the advantage of using the term open source is that the business world usually tries to keep free technologies from being installed." Those people who adopted the term used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to free themselves of the ideological and confrontational connotations of the term "free software". Later in February 1998, Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond founded an organization called Open Source Initiative "as an educational, advocacy, and stewardship organization at a cusp moment in the history of that culture."Evolution
In the early computing era, hardware and software were not clearly distinguished. Computer users typically had programming knowledge and could modify the systems they used. When IBM introduced the first commercial electronic computer in 1952, maintenance was challenging and costs were high. Software complexity posed additional challenges for computer owners. In response, computer owners formed a collaborative group called PACT to develop shared programming tools. In 1956, the Eisenhower administration imposed restrictions on AT&T's business activities, which influenced subsequent technological development patterns. Computer manufacturers subsequently focused on reducing costs and developing multi-user operating systems. MIT's computation center developed the Compatible Time-Sharing System, one of the first multi-user systems, establishing foundations for later collaborative software development practices.The open-source movement is branched from the free software movement which began in the late 80s with the launching of the GNU project by Richard Stallman. Stallman is regarded within the open-source community as sharing a key role in the conceptualization of freely-shared source code for software development. The term "free software" in the free software movement is meant to imply freedom of software exchange and modification. The term does not refer to any monetary freedom. Both the free-software movement and the open-source movement share this view of free exchange of programming code, and this is often why both of the movements are sometimes referenced in literature as part of the FOSS or "Free and Open Software" or FLOSS "Free/Libre Open-Source" communities.
These movements share fundamental differences in the view on open software. The main, factionalizing difference between the groups is the relationship between open-source and proprietary software. Often, makers of proprietary software, such as Microsoft, may make efforts to support open-source software to remain competitive. Members of the open-source community are willing to coexist with the makers of proprietary software and feel that the issue of whether software is open source is a matter of practicality.
In contrast, members of the free-software community maintain the vision that all software is a part of freedom of speech and that proprietary software is unethical and unjust. The free-software movement openly champions this belief through talks that denounce proprietary software. As a whole, the community refuses to support proprietary software. Further there are external motivations for these developers. One motivation is that, when a programmer fixes a bug or makes a program it benefits others in an open-source environment. Another motivation is that a programmer can work on multiple projects that they find interesting and enjoyable. Programming in the open-source world can also lead to commercial job offers or entrance into the venture capital community. These are just a few reasons why open-source programmers continue to create and advance software.
While cognizant of the fact that both the free-software movement and the open-source movement share similarities in practical recommendations regarding open source, the free-software movement fervently continues to distinguish themselves from the open-source movement entirely. The free-software movement maintains that it has fundamentally different attitudes towards the relationship between open-source and proprietary software. The free-software community does not view the open-source community as their target grievance, however. Their target grievance is proprietary software itself.
Legal issues
The open-source movement has faced a number of legal challenges. Companies that manage open-source products have some difficulty securing their trademarks.For example, the scope of "implied license" conjecture remains unclear and can compromise an enterprise's ability to patent productions made with open-source software. Another example is the case of companies offering add-ons for purchase; licensees who make additions to the open-source code that are similar to those for purchase may have immunity from patent suits.
In the court case "Jacobsen v. Katzer", the plaintiff sued the defendant for failing to put the required attribution notices in his modified version of the software, thereby violating license. The defendant claimed Artistic License in not adhering to the conditions of the software's use, but the wording of the attribution notice decided that this was not the case. "Jacobsen v Katzer" established open-source software's equality to proprietary software in the eyes of the law.
In a court case accusing Microsoft of being a monopoly, Linux and open-source software was introduced in court to prove that Microsoft had valid competitors and was grouped in with Apple.
There are resources available for those involved open-source projects in need of legal advice. The Software Freedom Law Center features a primer on open-source legal issues. International Free and Open Source Software Law Review offers peer-reviewed information for lawyers on free-software issues.
Formalization
The Open Source Initiative was instrumental in the formalization of the open-source movement. The OSI was founded by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens in February 1998 with the purpose of providing general education and advocacy of the open-source label through the creation of the Open Source Definition that was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines. The OSI has become one of the main supporters and advocators of the open-source movement.In February 1998, the open-source movement was adopted, formalized, and spearheaded by the Open Source Initiative, an organization formed to market software "as something more amenable to commercial business use" The OSI applied to register "Open Source" with the US Patent and Trademark Office, but was denied due to the term being generic and/or descriptive. Consequently, the OSI does not own the trademark "Open Source" in a national or international sense, although it does assert common-law trademark rights in the term.
The main tool they adopted for this was The Open Source Definition.
The open-source label was conceived at a strategy session that was held on February 3, 1998 in Palo Alto, California and on April 8 of the same year, the attendees of Tim O’Reilly's Free Software Summit voted to promote the use of the term open source.
Overall, the software developments that have come out of the open-source movement have not been unique to the computer-science field, but they have been successful in developing alternatives to propriety software. Members of the open-source community improve upon code and write programs that can rival much of the propriety software that is already available.
The rhetorical discourse used in open-source movements is now being broadened to include a larger group of non-expert users as well as advocacy organizations. Several organized groups such as the Creative Commons and global development agencies have also adopted the open-source concepts according to their own aims and for their own purposes.
The factors affecting the open-source movement's legal formalization are primarily based on recent political discussion over copyright, appropriation, and intellectual property.
Social structure of open source contribution teams
Historically, researchers have characterized open-source contributors as a centralized, onion-shaped group. The center of the onion consists of the core contributors who drive the project forward through large amounts of code and software design choices. The second-most layer are contributors who respond to pull requests and bug reports. The third-most layer out are contributors who mainly submit bug reports. The farthest out layer are those who watch the repository and users of the software that's generated. This model has been used in research to understand the lifecycle of open-source software, understand contributors to open-source software projects, how tools such as can help contributors at the various levels of involvement in the project, and further understand how the distributed nature of open source software may affect the productivity of developers.Some researchers have disagreed with this model. Crowston et al.'s work has found that some teams are much less centralized and follow a more distributed workflow pattern. The authors report that there's a weak correlation between project size and centralization, with smaller projects being more centralized and larger projects showing less centralization. However, the authors only looked at bug reporting and fixing, so it remains unclear whether this pattern is only associated with bug finding and fixing or if centralization does become more distributed with size for every aspect of the open-source paradigm.
An understanding of a team's centralization versus distributed nature is important as it may inform tool design and aid new developers in understanding a team's dynamic. One concern with open-source development is the high turnover rate of developers, even among core contributors. In order to continue an open-source project, new developers must continually join but must also have the necessary skill-set to contribute quality code to the project. Through a study of GitHub contribution on open-source projects, Middleton et al. found that the largest predictor of contributors becoming full-fledged members of an open-source team was whether they submitted and commented on pull requests. The authors then suggest that GitHub, as a tool, can aid in this process by supporting "checkbox" features on a team's open-source project that urge contributors to take part in these activities.