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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. The sharing of technical information predates the Internet and the personal computer considerably. Main article: History of free and open-source software 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. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community. Code is released under the terms of a software license. 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. The open-source software movement arose to clarify copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues.
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Open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers have used a variety of other terms. 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. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. Ī 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 model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. For other uses, see open source (disambiguation). For common use, see open-source software.
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