What is open source software? – Red Hat

Open source software matters to everyone, not just programmers, because it unlocks the potential of many more people to become innovators than a closed-source model. Open source communities, for instance, are organized around open source projects where anyone with skills can join and contribute code. These groups still maintain standards around contributing to open source projects just like proprietary software teams do, but they open up this process to anyone in the world who wants to contribute.

This open source development model has resulted in some of the most important applications and cloud platforms in use today. The most popular of which comprise LAMP, a model of service stacks that undergird much of the web. The LAMP acronym stands for:

Other examples of popular open source technologies include the Android mobile OS, the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the widely-used version control system Git, and the two related office suites OpenOffice and LibreOffice. On a broader scale, most innovation in the areas of cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence have been derived from open source software projects.

In addition to its instrumental role in the early web and some of the most popular applications used today, open source software has other advantages for businesses and individual programmers. When source code is open, it makes it easier for anyone to study it to develop new programming skills. Open source licensing also allows students to get practice by editing the code and sharing it with friends and the broader open source community, or even contributing fixes to existing open source projects.

Open source software also offers businesses the ability to customize it to meet their specific needs, or innovate new customer experiences not included in the original source code. Some also prefer open source software because there are many more developers looking for security vulnerabilities when the source code is openly available and has an active community supporting it.

Open source software is the result of an open source development model. The open source development model is decentralized and encourages open collaboration and peer production. It has influenced a broader movement in software development, and people often refer to its core principles as "the open source way."

The open source way is so effective because it can attract tremendous technical talent. Much of the innovation in technology is taking place in the open source community, and people all over the world end up using open source software. Behind many popular websites and applications you can find projects like Linux, Kubernetes, and Git, and people access the internet with open source browsers like Firefox and Chromium.

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What is open source software? - Red Hat