What is open source software?

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software which can be used freely and also source code can be changed without any restrictions. Of course there are different types of licenses in open source which may differ but the fundamental attribute of open source is it can be used free and modified. There might be certain restrictions like keep the copyright link intact and it cannot be resold as package etc,

Most of associate open source with Linux, but there are tons of other software which are open source and they both run on Linux and windows systems. People familiar with open source may know most of the Open Source applications were initially ported on the LAMP stack, nomenclature for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

Software licensed with a copyright license compliant with the Open Source Definition (OSD)

• Software is distributed with its source code in a human readable format

• Software is developed in an open and collaborative way by groups of developers

• Free re-distribution of software

• Availability of source code with software

• Free software defines software that provides its users the freedoms to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software using the GNU Public License (GNU).

• Some popular world-class open source projects are Linux,Apache, MySQL, PHP, Ruby.