According to an editorial in the journal La Civilta Cattolica the Internet
is a global public good that should be accessible to all and respectful
of the rights of others. With repressive regimes restricting access to information
and communications, democratic governments should work to guarantee
access to the Internet and adopt general principles to ensure network
use respects universal human rights.
"What the law permits or prohibits offline must also be the case
online ... The "only widespread international consensus" on online
material to be censored regards child pornography and cyberterrorism.
The article continued, saying that with individuals abusing the freedom
of expression, with companies potentially exploiting computer users for
financial gain and repressive regimes blocking information from their
citizens, the world needs a "Charter of Human Rights for the Internet".
Ensuring that access is broadly available and/or preventing unreasonable restrictions
Several
countries have adopted laws that require the state to work to ensure
that Internet access is broadly available and/or preventing the state
from unreasonably restricting an individual's access to information and
the Internet:
Costa Rica:
A 30 July 2010 ruling by the Supreme Court of Costa Rica stated:
"Without fear of equivocation, it can be said that these technologies
[information technology and communication] have impacted the way humans
communicate, facilitating the connection between people and institutions
worldwide and eliminating barriers of space and time. At this time,
access to these technologies becomes a basic tool to facilitate the
exercise of fundamental rights and democratic participation
(e-democracy) and citizen control, education, freedom of thought and
expression, access to information and public services online, the right
to communicate with government electronically and administrative
transparency, among others. This includes the fundamental right of
access to these technologies, in particular, the right of access to the
Internet or World Wide Web."
Estonia:
In 2000, the parliament launched a massive program to expand access to
the countryside. The Internet, the government argues, is essential for
life in the 21st century.
Finland: By July 2010, every person in Finland was to have access to a one-megabit per second broadband connection, according to the Ministry of Transport and Communications. And by 2015, access to a 100 Mbit/s connection.
France: In June 2009, the Constitutional Council,
France's highest court, declared access to the Internet to be a basic
human right in a strongly-worded decision that struck down portions of
the HADOPI law,
a law that would have tracked abusers and without judicial review and
automatically cut off network access to those who continued to download
illicit material after two warnings
Greece: Article 5A of the Constitution of Greece states that all persons have the right to participate in the Information Society
and that the state has an obligation to facilitate the production,
exchange, diffusion, and access to electronically transmitted
information.
Spain: Starting in 2011, Telefónica, the former state monopoly that holds the country's "universal service" contract, has to guarantee to offer "reasonably" priced broadband of at least one megabyte per second throughout Spain.
In December 2003 the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was convened under the auspice of the United Nations
(UN). After lengthy negotiations between governments, businesses and
civil society representatives the WSIS Declaration of Principles was
adopted reaffirming human rights:
We reaffirm the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and
interrelation of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, including
the right to development, as enshrined in the Vienna Declaration. We also reaffirm that democracy, sustainable development,
and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as good
governance at all levels are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. We
further resolve to strengthen the rule of law in international as in
national affairs.
We reaffirm, as an essential foundation of the Information Society, and as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; that
this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers. Communication is a fundamental social process, a
basic human need and the foundation of all social organisation. It is
central to the Information Society. Everyone, everywhere should have the
opportunity to participate and no one should be excluded from the
benefits of the Information Society offers.
The 2004 WSIS Declaration of Principles also acknowledged that "it is
necessary to prevent the use of information resources and technologies
for criminal and terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights".
Wolfgang Benedek comments that the WSIS Declaration only contains a
number of references to human rights and does not spell out any
procedures or mechanism to assure that human rights are considered in
practice.
Digital rights landscape
Digital rights landscape
In 2005, the United Kingdom's Open Rights Group
published a digital rights landscape, documenting the range of
organizations and people active in the cause of preserving digital
rights. The diagram related groups, individuals, and websites to
interest areas.
Internet Bill of Rights and Charter on Internet Rights and Principles
The
Dynamic Coalition for an Internet Bill of Rights held a large
preparatory Dialogue Forum on Internet Rights in Rome, September 2007
and presented its ideas at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Rio in November 2007 leading to a joint declaration on internet rights.
At the IGF in Hyderabad in 2008 a merger between the Dynamic Coalitions
on Human Rights for the Internet and on Principles for the Internet let
to the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles, which based
on the APC Internet Rights Charter and the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights elaborated the Charter of Human Rights and Principles for
the Internet presented at the IGF in Vilnius in 2010, which since has
been translated into several languages.
According to reports Cisco Systems
was invited to the initial discussions but didn't take part in the
initiative. Harrington Investments, which proposed that Cisco establish a
human rights board, has dismissed the GNI as a voluntary code of
conduct having any impact. Chief executive John Harrington called the
GNI "meaningless noise" and instead calls for bylaws to be introduced
that force boards of directors to accept human rights responsibilities.
BBC World Service global public opinion poll
A poll of 27,973 adults in 26 countries, including 14,306 Internet users, was conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan
using telephone and in-person interviews between 30 November 2009 and 7
February 2010. GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller felt, overall, that the
poll showed that:
Despite worries about privacy and fraud, people around the world
see access to the internet as their fundamental right. They think the
web is a force for good, and most don’t want governments to regulate it.
Findings from the poll include:
Nearly four in five (78%) Internet users felt that the Internet had brought them greater freedom.
Most Internet users (53%) felt that "the internet should never be regulated by any level of government anywhere".
Opinion was evenly split between Internet users who felt that "the
internet is a safe place to express my opinions" (48%) and those who
disagreed (49%).
The aspects of the Internet that cause the most concern include: fraud (32%), violent and explicit content (27%), threats to privacy (20%), state censorship of content (6%), and the extent of corporate presence (3%).
Almost four in five Internet users and non-users around the world
felt that access to the Internet was a fundamental right (50% strongly
agreed, 29% somewhat agreed, 9% somewhat disagreed, 6% strongly
disagreed, and 6% gave no opinion).
Recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur
The 88 recommendations made by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression in a May 2011 report to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations General Assembly include several that bear on the question of Internet access:
67. Unlike any other medium, the Internet enables individuals to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds
instantaneously and inexpensively across national borders. By vastly
expanding the capacity of individuals to enjoy their right to freedom of
opinion and expression, which is an "enabler" of other human rights,
the Internet boosts economic, social and political development, and
contributes to the progress of humankind as a whole. In this regard, the
Special Rapporteur encourages other Special Procedures mandate holders
to engage on the issue of the Internet with respect to their particular
mandates.
78. While blocking and filtering measures deny users access to
specific content on the Internet, States have also taken measures to cut
off access to the Internet entirely. The Special Rapporteur considers
cutting off users from Internet access, regardless of the justification
provided, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property
rights law, to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19,
paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.
79. The Special Rapporteur calls upon all States to ensure that
Internet access is maintained at all times, including during times of
political unrest.
85. Given that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for
realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and
accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access
to the Internet should be a priority for all States. Each State should
thus develop a concrete and effective policy, in consultation with
individuals from all sections of society, including the private sector
and relevant Government ministries, to make the Internet widely
available, accessible and affordable to all segments of population.
These recommendations have led to the suggestion that Internet access itself is or should become a fundamental human right.
Raymond was president from its founding until February 2005, followed briefly by Russ Nelson and then Michael Tiemann. In May 2012, the new board elected Simon Phipps as president and in May 2015 Allison Randal was elected as president when Phipps stepped down in preparation for the 2016 end of his Board term. Phipps became President again in September 2017. Molly de Blanc was elected President in May, 2019, followed by Josh Simmons in May, 2020.
The organization appointed Stefano Maffulli as its Executive Director in September 2021, at the end of a process set by the Board of Directors to transform the organization. Josh Simmons is Chair of the Board.
The group adopted the Open Source Definition for open-source software, based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
They also established the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as a steward
organization for the movement. However, they were unsuccessful in their
attempt to secure a trademark for 'open source' to control the use of the term.
In 2008, in an apparent effort to reform governance of the
organization, the OSI Board invited 50 individuals to join a "Charter
Members" group; by 26 July 2008, 42 of the original invitees had
accepted the invitations. The full membership of the Charter Members has
never been publicly revealed, and the Charter Members group
communicated by way of a closed-subscription mailing list,
"osi-discuss", with non-public archives.
In 2012, under the leadership of OSI director and then-president Simon Phipps,
the OSI began transitioning towards a membership-based governance
structure. The OSI initiated an Affiliate Membership program for
"government-recognized non-profit charitable and not-for-profit industry
associations and academic institutions anywhere in the world". Subsequently, the OSI announced an Individual Membership program and listed a number of Corporate Sponsors.
On November 8, 2013, OSI appointed Patrick Masson as its General Manager. As of August, 2020, Deb Nicholson is the Interim General Manager.
Under the direction of Deborah Nicholson, the interim manager, the
voting and election was held with results and then halted and set for
re-election due to vulnerabilities in the election process. "This week
we found a vulnerability in our voting processes that was exploited and
had an impact on the outcome of the recent Board Election." No election results or further updates are posted as of June 2021.
In January 2020, founder Bruce Perens left OSI over controversy
regarding a new license (the Cryptographic Autonomy License), which had
been proposed for the OSI's approval.
Later, in August 2020, Perens elaborated on his concerns: "We created a
tower of babel of licenses. We did not design-in license compliance,
and we have a tremendous noncompliance problem that isn't getting
better. We can't afford to sue our copyright infringers."
Eric Raymond, another co-founder of the OSI, was later banned from the OSI mailing list in March 2020.
In November 2020 the Board of Directors announced a search for an executive director
which was concluded in September 2021 with the appointment of Stefano
Maffulli. At the same time, the role of President of the Board was
abandoned in favor of Chair of the Board.
Relationship with the free software movement
Both the modern free software movement and the Open Source Initiative were born from a common history of Unix, Internet free software, and the hacker culture, but their basic goals and philosophy differ, the free software movement
being more focused on the ethics of software, and their open source
counterparts being more focused on practical benefits. The Open Source
Initiative chose the term "open source," in founding member Michael Tiemann's
words, to "dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had
been associated with 'free software'" and instead promote open source
ideas on "pragmatic, business-case grounds."
As early as 1999, OSI co-founder Perens objected to the "schism" that was developing between supporters of the Free Software Foundation
(FSF) and the OSI because of their disparate approaches. Perens had
hoped the OSI would merely serve as an "introduction" to FSF principles
for "non-hackers." Richard Stallman
of FSF has sharply criticized the OSI for its pragmatic focus and for
ignoring what he considers the central "ethical imperative" and emphasis
on "freedom" underlying free software as he defines it.
Nevertheless, Stallman has described his free software movement and the
Open Source Initiative as separate camps within the same broad
free-software community and acknowledged that despite philosophical
differences, proponents of open source and free software "often work
together on practical projects."
On March 23, 2021, in response to Richard Stallman's reappointment to the Board of the Free Software Foundation,
the OSI released a statement calling upon the FSF to "hold Stallman
responsible for past behavior, remove him from the organization's
leadership and work to address the harm he caused to all those he has
excluded: those he considers less worthy, and those he has hurt with his
words and actions." The OSI also stated that they would not participate
in any events that include Stallman and "cannot collaborate with the
Free Software Foundation until Stallman is removed from the
organization's leadership."
Open source is source code that is made freely available for
possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to
use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.
A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery.
Open source promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers have used a variety of other terms. Open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet. The open-source software movement arose to clarify copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues.
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design. Code is released under the terms of a software license. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.
Many large formal institutions have sprung up to support the development of the open-source movement, including the Apache Software Foundation, which supports community projects such as the open-source framework Apache Hadoop and the open-source HTTP server Apache HTTP.
The sharing of technical information predates the Internet and the personal computer considerably. For instance, in the early years of automobile development a group of capital monopolists owned the rights to a 2-cycle gasoline-engine patent originally filed by George B. Selden.
By controlling this patent, they were able to monopolize the industry
and force car manufacturers to adhere to their demands, or risk a
lawsuit.
In 1911, independent automaker Henry Ford
won a challenge to the Selden patent. The result was that the Selden
patent became virtually worthless and a new association (which would
eventually become the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association) was formed.
The new association instituted a cross-licensing agreement among all US
automotive manufacturers: although each company would develop
technology and file patents, these patents were shared openly and
without the exchange of money among all the manufacturers. By the time the US entered World War II,
92 Ford patents and 515 patents from other companies were being shared
among these manufacturers, without any exchange of money (or lawsuits).
Early instances of the free sharing of source code include IBM's source releases of its operating systems and other programs in the 1950s and 1960s, and the SHARE user group that formed to facilitate the exchange of software. Beginning in the 1960s, ARPANET researchers used an open "Request for Comments"
(RFC) process to encourage feedback in early telecommunication network
protocols. This led to the birth of the early Internet in 1969.
The sharing of source code on the Internet began when the Internet was relatively primitive, with software distributed via UUCP, Usenet, IRC, and Gopher. BSD,
for example, was first widely distributed by posts to comp.os.linux on
the Usenet, which is also where its development was discussed. Linux followed in this model.
Open source as a term
The term "open source" was first proposed by a group of people in the free software movement
who were critical of the political agenda and moral philosophy implied
in the term "free software" and sought to reframe the discourse to
reflect a more commercially minded position. In addition, the ambiguity of the term "free software" was seen as discouraging business adoption. However, the ambiguity of the word "free" exists primarily in English as it can refer to cost. The group included Christine Peterson, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann and Eric S. Raymond. Peterson suggested "open source" at a meeting held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's announcement in January 1998 of a source code release for Navigator. Linus Torvalds gave his support the following day, and Phil Hughes backed the term in Linux Journal. Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement, initially seemed to adopt the term, but later changed his mind. Netscape released its source code under the Netscape Public License and later under the Mozilla Public License.
Raymond was especially active in the effort to popularize the new
term. He made the first public call to the free software community to
adopt it in February 1998. Shortly after, he founded the Open Source Initiative in collaboration with Bruce Perens.
The term gained further visibility through an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher Tim O'Reilly. Originally titled the "Freeware Summit" and later known as the "Open Source Summit", the event was attended by the leaders of many of the most important free and open-source projects, including Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, Brian Behlendorf, Eric Allman, Guido van Rossum, Michael Tiemann, Paul Vixie, Jamie Zawinski,
and Eric Raymond. At that meeting, alternatives to the term "free
software" were discussed. Tiemann argued for "sourceware" as a new term,
while Raymond argued for "open source". The assembled developers took a
vote, and the winner was announced at a press conference the same
evening.
"Open source" has never managed to entirely supersede the older term "free software", giving rise to the combined term free and open-source software (FOSS).
Survey on the reasons for using Open Source in 200 Swiss organizations.
Some economists agree that open-source is an information good
or "knowledge good" with original work involving a significant amount
of time, money, and effort. The cost of reproducing the work is low
enough that additional users may be added at zero or near zero cost –
this is referred to as the marginal cost of a product. Copyright
creates a monopoly so that the price charged to consumers can be
significantly higher than the marginal cost of production. This allows
the author to recoup the cost of making the original work. Copyright
thus creates access costs for consumers who value the work more than the
marginal cost but less than the initial production cost. Access costs
also pose problems for authors who wish to create a derivative work—such as a copy of a software program modified to fix a bug or add a feature, or a remix of a song—but are unable or unwilling to pay the copyright holder for the right to do so.
Being organized as effectively a "consumers' cooperative",
open source eliminates some of the access costs of consumers and
creators of derivative works by reducing the restrictions of copyright.
Basic economic theory predicts that lower costs would lead to higher
consumption and also more frequent creation of derivative works.
Organizations such as Creative Commons host websites where individuals can file for alternative "licenses", or levels of restriction, for their works.
These self-made protections free the general society of the costs of policing copyright infringement.
Others argue that since consumers do not pay for their copies,
creators are unable to recoup the initial cost of production and thus
have little economic incentive to create in the first place. By this
argument, consumers would lose out because some of the goods they would
otherwise purchase would not be available. In practice, content
producers can choose whether to adopt a proprietary license and charge
for copies, or an open license. Some goods which require large amounts
of professional research and development, such as the pharmaceutical industry (which depends largely on patents,
not copyright for intellectual property protection) are almost
exclusively proprietary, although increasingly sophisticated
technologies are being developed on open-source principles.
There is evidence that open-source development creates enormous value. For example, in the context of open-source hardware design, digital designs are shared for free and anyone with access to digital manufacturing technologies (e.g. RepRap 3D printers) can replicate the product for the cost of materials. The original sharer may receive feedback and potentially improvements on the original design from the peer production community.
Many open source projects have a high economic value. According
to the Battery Open Source Software Index (BOSS), the ten economically
most important open source projects are:
The rank given is based on the activity regarding projects in online
discussions, on GitHub, on search activity in search engines and on the
influence on the labour market.
Creation for its own sake – For example, Wikipedia editors add content for recreation. Artists have a drive to create. Both communities benefit from free starting material.
Patron – For example, open access
publishing relies on institutional and government funding of research
faculty, who also have a professional incentive to publish for
reputation and career advancement. Works of the U.S. federal government
are automatically released into the public domain.
Freemium – Give away a limited version for free and charge for a premium version (potentially using a dual license).
Give away the product and charge something related – Charge for support of open-source enterprise software, give away music but charge for concert admission.
Give away work in order to gain market share – Used by artists, in
corporate software to spoil a dominant competitor (for example in the browser wars and the Android operating system).
For own use – Businesses or individual software developers often
create software to solve a problem, bearing the full cost of initial
creation. They will then open source the solution, and benefit from the
improvements others make for their own needs. Communalizing the
maintenance burden distributes the cost across more users; free riders can also benefit without undermining the creation process.
Open collaboration
The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration,
meaning "any system of innovation or production that relies on
goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who interact to
create a product (or service) of economic value, which they make
available to contributors and noncontributors alike." A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints,
and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source
movement in software began as a response to the limitations of
proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery.
The open-source model for software development inspired the use
of the term to refer to other forms of open collaboration, such as in Internet forums, mailing lists and online communities. Open collaboration is also thought to be the operating principle underlining a gamut of diverse ventures, including TEDx and Wikipedia.
Riehle et al. define open collaboration as collaboration based on three principles of egalitarianism, meritocracy, and self-organization.
Levine and Prietula define open collaboration as "any system of
innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely
coordinated participants who interact to create a product (or service)
of economic value, which they make available to contributors and
noncontributors alike."
This definition captures multiple instances, all joined by similar
principles. For example, all of the elements — goods of economic value,
open access to contribute and consume, interaction and exchange,
purposeful yet loosely coordinated work — are present in an open source
software project, in Wikipedia, or in a user forum or community. They
can also be present in a commercial website that is based on user-generated content.
In all of these instances of open collaboration, anyone can contribute
and anyone can freely partake in the fruits of sharing, which are
produced by interacting participants who are loosely coordinated.
An annual conference dedicated to the research and practice of open collaboration is the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (OpenSym, formerly WikiSym).
As per its website, the group defines open collaboration as
"collaboration that is egalitarian (everyone can join, no principled or
artificial barriers to participation exist), meritocratic (decisions and
status are merit-based rather than imposed) and self-organizing
(processes adapt to people rather than people adapt to pre-defined
processes)."
Open source promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of other terms. Open source gained hold in part due to the rise of the Internet. The open-source software movement arose to clarify copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues.
An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified or shared (with or without modification) under defined terms and conditions.
This allows end users and commercial companies to review and modify the
source code, blueprint or design for their own customization, curiosity
or troubleshooting needs. Open-source licensed software is mostly
available free of charge, though this does not necessarily have to be the case. Licenses which only permit non-commercial
redistribution or modification of the source code for personal use only
are generally not considered as open-source licenses. However,
open-source licenses may have some restrictions, particularly regarding
the expression of respect to the origin of software, such as a
requirement to preserve the name of the authors and a copyright
statement within the code, or a requirement to redistribute the licensed
software only under the same license (as in a copyleft license). One popular set of open-source software licenses are those approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) based on their Open Source Definition (OSD).
Applications
Open-source model application domains
Social and political views have been affected by the growth of the
concept of open source. Advocates in one field often support the
expansion of open source in other fields. But Eric Raymond and other founders of the open-source movement
have sometimes publicly argued against speculation about applications
outside software, saying that strong arguments for software openness
should not be weakened by overreaching into areas where the story may be
less compelling. The broader impact of the open-source movement, and
the extent of its role in the development of new information sharing
procedures, remain to be seen.
The open-source movement has inspired increased transparency and liberty in biotechnology research, for example CAMBIA Even the research methodologies themselves can benefit from the application of open-source principles. It has also given rise to the rapidly-expanding open-source hardware movement.
Blender, an open-source 3D graphics editor, running in Windows 7
Open-source software
is software which source code is published and made available to the
public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code
without paying royalties or fees.
Open-source code can evolve through community cooperation. These
communities are composed of individual programmers as well as large
companies. Some of the individual programmers who start an open-source
project may end up establishing companies offering products or services
incorporating open-source programs. Examples of open-source software products are:
Linux (that much of world's server parks are running)
Open-source hardware
is hardware which initial specification, usually in a software format,
is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy,
modify and redistribute the hardware and source code without paying
royalties or fees. Open-source hardware evolves through community
cooperation. These communities are composed of individual
hardware/software developers, hobbyists, as well as very large
companies. Examples of open-source hardware initiatives are:
Arduino, a microcontroller platform for hobbyists, artists and designers.
Simputer, an open hardware handheld computer, designed in India for use in environments where computing devices such as personal computers are deemed inappropriate.
LEON: A family of open-source microprocessors distributed in a library with peripheral IP cores, open SPARC V8 specification, implementation available under GNU GPL.
Tinkerforge:
A system of open-source stackable microcontroller building blocks.
Allows control of motors and read out sensors with the programming
languages C, C++, C#, Object Pascal, Java, PHP, Python and Ruby over a
USB or Wifi connection on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. All of the
hardware is licensed under CERN OHL (CERN Open Hardware License).
Open Compute Project:
designs for computer data center including power supply, Intel
motherboard, AMD motherboard, chassis, racks, battery cabinet, and
aspects of electrical and mechanical design.
Some publishers of open-access journals have argued that data from food science and gastronomy studies should be freely available to aid reproducibility. A number of people have published creative commons licensed recipe books.
Open-source colas – cola soft drinks, similar to Coca-Cola and Pepsi,
whose recipe is open source and developed by volunteers. The taste is
said to be comparable to that of the standard beverages. Most
corporations producing beverages hold their formulas as closely guarded
secrets.
Free Beer (originally Vores Øl) – is an open-source beer created by students at the IT-University in Copenhagen together with Superflex, an artist collective, to illustrate how open-source concepts might be applied outside the digital world.
Open-content projects organized by the Wikimedia Foundation –
Sites such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary have embraced the open-content Creative Commons
content licenses. These licenses were designed to adhere to principles
similar to various open-source software development licenses. Many of
these licenses ensure that content remains free for re-use, that source
documents are made readily available to interested parties, and that
changes to content are accepted easily back into the system. Important
sites embracing open-source-like ideals are Project Gutenbergand Wikisource, both of which post many books on which the copyright has expired and are thus in the public domain, ensuring that anyone has free, unlimited access to that content.
Open ICEcat is an open catalog for the IT, CE and Lighting sectors with product data-sheets based on Open Content License agreement. The digital content are distributed in XML and URL formats.
Google Sketchup's 3D Warehouse is an open-source design community centered around the use of proprietary software that's free.
Pharmaceuticals – There have been several proposals for open-source pharmaceutical development which led to the establishment of the Tropical Disease Initiative and the Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria Consortium.
Genomics – The term "open-source genomics" refers to the combination
of rapid release of sequence data (especially raw reads) and
crowdsourced analyses from bioinformaticians around the world that
characterised the analysis of the 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak.
OpenEMR
– OpenEMR is an ONC-ATB Ambulatory EHR 2011-2012 certified electronic
health records and medical practice management application. It features
fully integrated electronic health, records, practice management,
scheduling, electronic billing, and is the base for many EHR programs.
Research – The Science Commons was created as an alternative to the expensive legal costs of sharing and reusing scientific works in journals etc.
Research – The Open Solar Outdoors Test Field (OSOTF) is a grid-connected photovoltaic
test system, which continuously monitors the output of a number of
photovoltaic modules and correlates their performance to a long list of
highly accurate meteorological readings. The OSOTF is organized under
open-source principles – All data and analysis is to be made freely
available to the entire photovoltaic community and the general public.
Engineering – Hyperloop, a form of high-speed transport proposed by entrepreneur Elon Musk,
which he describes as "an elevated, reduced-pressure tube that contains
pressurized capsules driven within the tube by a number of linear
electric motors".
Construction – WikiHouse is an open-source project for designing and building houses.
Energy research - The Open Energy Modelling Initiative promotes open-source models and open data in energy research and policy advice.
An open-source robot is a robot whose blueprints, schematics, or source code are released under an open-source model
Other
VIA OpenBook is an open-source hardware laptop reference design.
Open-source principles can be applied to technical areas such as digital communication protocols and data storage formats.
Open-design
– which involves applying open-source methodologies to the design of
artifacts and systems in the physical world. It is very nascent but has
huge potential.
Open-source appropriate technology (OSAT) refers to technologies that are designed in the same fashion as free and open-source software. These technologies must be "appropriate technology"
(AT) – meaning technology that is designed with special consideration
to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, and economic
aspects of the community it is intended for. An example of this
application is the use of open-source 3D printers like the RepRap to manufacture appropriate technology.
Teaching
– which involves applying the concepts of open source to instruction
using a shared web space as a platform to improve upon learning,
organizational, and management challenges. An example of an Open-source
courseware is the Java Education & Development Initiative (JEDI). Other examples include Khan Academy and wikiversity. At the university level, the use of open-source-appropriate technology classroom projects has been shown to be successful in forging the connection between science/engineering and social benefit:
This approach has the potential to use university students' access to
resources and testing equipment in furthering the development of appropriate technology. Similarly OSAT has been used as a tool for improving service learning.
There are few examples of business information (methodologies,
advice, guidance, practices) using the open-source model, although this
is another case where the potential is enormous. ITIL is close to open source. It uses the Cathedral model
(no mechanism exists for user contribution) and the content must be
bought for a fee that is small by business consulting standards
(hundreds of British pounds). Various checklists are published by
government, banks or accounting firms.
An open-source group emerged in 2012 that is attempting to design a
firearm that may be downloaded from the internet and "printed" on a 3D Printer. Calling itself Defense Distributed, the group wants to facilitate "a working plastic gun that could be downloaded and reproduced by anybody with a 3D printer".
Agrecol, a German NGO has developed an open-source licence for seeds operating with copyleft
and created OpenSourceSeeds as a respective service provider. Breeders
that apply the license to their new invented material prevent it from
the threat of privatisation and help to establish a commons-based
breeding sector as an alternative to the commercial sector.
Free and open-source software (FOSS) or Free/Libre and open-source software (FLOSS) is openly shared source code that is licensed without any restrictions on usage, modification, or distribution.
Confusion persists about this definition because the "Free", also known
as "Libre", refers to the freedom of the product not the price,
expense, cost, or charge. For example, "being free to speak" is not the
same as "free beer".
Conversely, Richard Stallman argues the obvious meaning of
term "open source" is that the source code is public/accessible for
inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted, although the
proponents of the term say the conditions in the Open Source Definition must be fulfilled.
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code
is available to the general public for use for any (including
commercial) purpose, or modification from its original design.
Open-source code is meant to be a collaborative effort, where
programmers improve upon the source code and share the changes within
the community. Code is released under the terms of a software license. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.
Open manufacturing or "Open Production" or "Design Global, Manufacture Local", a new socioeconomic production model to openly and collaboratively produce and distribute physical objects
Open-source architecture (OSArc), emerging procedures in imagination and formation of virtual and real spaces within an inclusive universal infrastructure
Open-source product development (OSPD), collaborative product and process openness of open-source hardware for any interested participants
Open-source robotics, physical artifacts of the subject are offered by the open design movement
Open Source Seed Initiative, open source varieties of crop seeds, as an alternative to patent-protected seeds sold by large agriculture companies.
Science and medicine
Open science,
the movement to make scientific research, data and dissemination
accessible to all levels of an inquiring society, amateur or
professional
Open science data, a type of open data focused on publishing observations and results of scientific activities available for anyone to analyze and reuse
Open Source Cinema, a collaborative website to produce a documentary film
Open-source journalism, commonly describes a spectrum on online publications, forms of innovative publishing of online journalism, and content voting, rather than the sourcing of news stories by "professional" journalists
Open-source intelligence,
an intelligence gathering discipline based on information collected
from open sources (not to be confused with open-source artificial
intelligence such as Mycroft (software)).
Society
The
rise of open-source culture in the 20th century resulted from a growing
tension between creative practices that involve require access to
content that is often copyrighted,
and restrictive intellectual property laws and policies governing
access to copyrighted content. The two main ways in which intellectual
property laws became more restrictive in the 20th century were
extensions to the term of copyright (particularly in the United States) and penalties, such as those articulated in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), placed on attempts to circumvent anti-piracy technologies.
Although artistic appropriation is often permitted under fair-use
doctrines, the complexity and ambiguity of these doctrines creates an
atmosphere of uncertainty among cultural practitioners. Also, the
protective actions of copyright owners create what some call a "chilling effect" among cultural practitioners.
The idea of an "open-source" culture runs parallel to "Free Culture," but is substantively different. Free culture is a term derived from the free software movement,
and in contrast to that vision of culture, proponents of open-source
culture (OSC) maintain that some intellectual property law needs to
exist to protect cultural producers. Yet they propose a more nuanced
position than corporations have traditionally sought. Instead of seeing
intellectual property law as an expression of instrumental rules
intended to uphold either natural rights or desirable outcomes, an
argument for OSC takes into account diverse goods (as in "the Good
life") and ends.
Sites such as ccMixter offer up free web space for anyone willing to license their work under a Creative Commons
license. The resulting cultural product is then available to download
free (generally accessible) to anyone with an Internet connection. Older analog technologies such as the telephone or television have limitations on the kind of interaction users can have.
Through various technologies such as peer-to-peer networks and blogs, cultural producers can take advantage of vast social networks
to distribute their products. As opposed to traditional media
distribution, redistributing digital media on the Internet can be
virtually costless. Technologies such as BitTorrent and Gnutella take advantage of various characteristics of the Internet protocol (TCP/IP) in an attempt to totally decentralize file distribution.
Open politics (sometimes known as Open-source politics)
is a political process that uses Internet technologies such as blogs,
email and polling to provide for a rapid feedback mechanism between
political organizations and their supporters. There is also an
alternative conception of the term Open-source politics which
relates to the development of public policy under a set of rules and
processes similar to the open-source software movement.
Open-source governance is similar to open-source politics, but it applies more to the democratic process and promotes the freedom of information.
The South Korean government
wants to increase its use of free and open-source software, in order to
decrease its dependence on proprietary software solutions. It plans to
make open standards a requirement, to allow the government to choose
between multiple operating systems and web browsers. Korea's Ministry of
Science, ICT & Future Planning is also preparing ten pilots on
using open-source software distributions.
Ethics
Open-source ethics is split into two strands:
Open-source ethics as an ethical school – Charles Ess and David
Berry are researching whether ethics can learn anything from an
open-source approach. Ess famously even defined the AoIR Research Guidelines as an example of open-source ethics.
Open-source ethics as a professional body of rules – This is based
principally on the computer ethics school, studying the questions of
ethics and professionalism in the computer industry in general and
software development in particular.
Open-source journalism formerly referred to the standard journalistic techniques of news gathering and fact checking, reflecting open-source intelligence, a similar term used in military intelligence circles. Now, open-source journalism commonly refers to forms of innovative publishing of online journalism,
rather than the sourcing of news stories by a professional journalist.
In the 25 December 2006 issue of TIME magazine this is referred to as user created content and listed alongside more traditional open-source projects such as OpenSolaris and Linux.
Weblogs,
or blogs, are another significant platform for open-source culture.
Blogs consist of periodic, reverse chronologically ordered posts, using a
technology that makes webpages easily updatable with no understanding
of design, code, or file transfer
required. While corporations, political campaigns and other formal
institutions have begun using these tools to distribute information,
many blogs are used by individuals for personal expression, political
organizing, and socializing. Some, such as LiveJournal or WordPress,
utilize open-source software that is open to the public and can be
modified by users to fit their own tastes. Whether the code is open or
not, this format represents a nimble tool for people to borrow and
re-present culture; whereas traditional websites made the illegal
reproduction of culture difficult to regulate, the mutability of blogs
makes "open sourcing" even more uncontrollable since it allows a larger
portion of the population to replicate material more quickly in the
public sphere.
Messageboards
are another platform for open-source culture. Messageboards (also known
as discussion boards or forums), are places online where people with
similar interests can congregate and post messages for the community to
read and respond to. Messageboards sometimes have moderators who enforce
community standards of etiquette such as banning spammers.
Other common board features are private messages (where users can send
messages to one another) as well as chat (a way to have a real time
conversation online) and image uploading. Some messageboards use phpBB,
which is a free open-source package. Where blogs are more about
individual expression and tend to revolve around their authors,
messageboards are about creating a conversation amongst its users where
information can be shared freely and quickly. Messageboards are a way to
remove intermediaries from everyday life—for instance, instead of
relying on commercials and other forms of advertising, one can ask other
users for frank reviews of a product, movie or CD. By removing the
cultural middlemen, messageboards help speed the flow of information and
exchange of ideas.
OpenDocument is an opendocument file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets,
charts, and presentations. Organizations and individuals that store
their data in an open format such as OpenDocument avoid being locked into
a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their
current vendor goes out of business, raises their prices, changes their
software, or changes their licensing terms to something less favorable.
Open-source movie production
is either an open call system in which a changing crew and cast
collaborate in movie production, a system in which the result is made
available for re-use by others or in which exclusively open-source
products are used in the production. The 2006 movie Elephants Dream is said to be the "world's first open movie", created entirely using open-source technology.
An open-source documentary film has a production process allowing the open contributions of archival material footage,
and other filmic elements, both in unedited and edited form, similar to
crowdsourcing. By doing so, on-line contributors become part of the
process of creating the film, helping to influence the editorial and
visual material to be used in the documentary, as well as its thematic
development. The first open-source documentary film is the non-profit WBCN and the American Revolution,
which went into development in 2006, and will examine the role media
played in the cultural, social and political changes from 1968 to 1974
through the story of radio station WBCN-FM in Boston.
The film is being produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media and the
non-profit Center for Independent Documentary. Open Source Cinema is a
website to create Basement Tapes, a feature documentary about copyright
in the digital age, co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
Open-source film-making
refers to a form of film-making that takes a method of idea formation
from open-source software, but in this case the 'source' for a filmmaker
is raw unedited footage rather than programming code. It can also refer
to a method of film-making where the process of creation is 'open' i.e.
a disparate group of contributors, at different times contribute to the
final piece.
Open-IPTV is IPTV
that is not limited to one recording studio, production studio, or
cast. Open-IPTV uses the Internet or other means to pool efforts and
resources together to create an online community that all contributes to
a show.
Within the academic community, there is discussion about expanding
what could be called the "intellectual commons" (analogous to the Creative Commons). Proponents of this view have hailed the Connexions Project at Rice University, OpenCourseWare project at MIT, Eugene Thacker's article on "open-source DNA", the "Open Source Cultural Database", Salman Khan's Khan Academy and Wikipedia as examples of applying open source outside the realm of computer software.
Open-source curricula are instructional resources whose digital source can be freely used, distributed and modified.
Another strand to the academic community is in the area of
research. Many funded research projects produce software as part of
their work. There is an increasing interest in making the outputs of
such projects available under an open-source license. In the UK the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has developed a policy on open-source software. JISC also funds a development service called OSS Watch
which acts as an advisory service for higher and further education
institutions wishing to use, contribute to and develop open-source
software.
On 30 March 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Health Care
and Education Reconciliation Act, which included $2 billion over four
years to fund the TAACCCT program,
which is described as "the largest OER (open education resources)
initiative in the world and uniquely focused on creating curricula in
partnership with industry for credentials in vocational industry sectors
like manufacturing, health, energy, transportation, and IT".
Innovation communities
The
principle of sharing pre-dates the open-source movement; for example,
the free sharing of information has been institutionalized in the
scientific enterprise since at least the 19th century. Open-source
principles have always been part of the scientific community. The
sociologist Robert K. Merton
described the four basic elements of the community—universalism (an
international perspective), communalism (sharing information),
objectivity (removing one's personal views from the scientific inquiry)
and organized skepticism (requirements of proof and review) that
describe the (idealised) scientific community.
These principles are, in part, complemented by US law's focus on
protecting expression and method but not the ideas themselves. There is
also a tradition of publishing research results to the scientific
community instead of keeping all such knowledge proprietary. One of the
recent initiatives in scientific publishing has been open access—the
idea that research should be published in such a way that it is free
and available to the public. There are currently many open access
journals where the information is available free online, however most
journals do charge a fee (either to users or libraries for access). The Budapest Open Access Initiative is an international effort with the goal of making all research articles available free on the Internet.
The National Institutes of Health
has recently proposed a policy on "Enhanced Public Access to NIH
Research Information". This policy would provide a free, searchable
resource of NIH-funded results to the public and with other
international repositories six months after its initial publication. The
NIH's move is an important one because there is significant amount of
public funding in scientific research. Many of the questions have yet to
be answered—the balancing of profit vs. public access, and ensuring
that desirable standards and incentives do not diminish with a shift to
open access.
New NGO communities are starting to use the open-source
technology as a tool. One example is the Open Source Youth Network
started in 2007 in Lisboa by ISCA members.
Open innovation is also a new emerging concept which advocate putting R&D in a common pool. The Eclipse platform is openly presenting itself as an Open innovation network.
Arts and recreation
Copyright
protection is used in the performing arts and even in athletic
activities. Some groups have attempted to remove copyright from such
practices.
In 2012, Russian music composer, scientist and Russian Pirate Party member Victor Argonov presented detailed raw files of his electronic opera "2032" under free license CC-BY-NC 3.0 (later relicensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0). This opera was originally composed and published in 2007 by Russian label MC Entertainment as a commercial product, but then the author changed its status to free. In his blog
he said that he decided to open raw files (including wav, midi and
other used formats) to the public in order to support worldwide pirate
actions against SOPA and PIPA. Several Internet resources called "2032" the first open-source musical opera in history.
Other related movements
The following are events and applications that have been developed via the open source community, and echo the ideologies of the open source movement.
Open Education Consortium —
an organization composed of various colleges that support open source
and share some of their material online. This organization, headed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was established to aid in the exchange of open source educational materials.
Wikipedia — user-generated online encyclopedia with sister projects in academic areas, such as Wikiversity — a community dedicated to the creation and exchange of learning materials
Synthetic Biology- This new technology is potentially
important because it promises to enable cheap, lifesaving new drugs as
well as helping to yield biofuels that may help to solve our energy
problem. Although synthetic biology has not yet come out of its "lab"
stage, it has potential to become industrialized in the near future. In
order to industrialize open source science, there are some scientists
who are trying to build their own brand of it.
Ideologically-related movements
The open-access movement
is a movement that is similar in ideology to the open source movement.
Members of this movement maintain that academic material should be
readily available to provide help with "future research, assist in
teaching and aid in academic purposes." The Open access movement aims to
eliminate subscription fees and licensing restrictions of academic
materials.
The free-culture movement
is a movement that seeks to achieve a culture that engages in
collective freedom via freedom of expression, free public access to
knowledge and information, full demonstration of creativity and
innovation in various arenas and promotion of citizen liberties.
Creative Commons
is an organization that "develops, supports, and stewards legal and
technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and
innovation." It encourages the use of protected properties online for
research, education, and creative purposes in pursuit of a universal
access. Creative Commons provides an infrastructure through a set of
copyright licenses and tools that creates a better balance within the
realm of "all rights reserved" properties.
The Creative Commons license offers a slightly more lenient alternative
to "all rights reserved" copyrights for those who do not wish to
exclude the use of their material.
The Zeitgeist Movement is an international social movement that advocates a transition into a sustainable "resource-based economy" based on collaboration in which monetary incentives are replaced by commons-based ones with everyone having access to everything (from code to products) as in "open source everything".
While its activism and events are typically focused on media and
education, TZM is a major supporter of open source projects worldwide
since they allow for uninhibited advancement of science and technology,
independent of constraints posed by institutions of patenting and
capitalist investment.
P2P Foundation is an "international organization focused on studying, researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices
in a very broad sense". Its objectives incorporate those of the open
source movement, whose principles are integrated in a larger
socio-economic model.
