

Examples are Donald Knuth in 1979 with the TeX typesetting system and Richard Stallman in 1983 with the GNU operating system. However, academics still often developed software collaboratively. Eventually, the open-source notion moved to the wayside of commercialization of software in the years 1970–1980.

For example, Unix included the operating system source code for users. In the early days of computing, such as the 1950s and into the 1960s, programmers and developers shared software to learn from each other and evolve the field of computing. Open source code can be used for studying and allows capable end users to adapt software to their personal needs in a similar way user scripts and custom style sheets allow for web sites, and eventually publish the modification as a fork for users with similar preferences, and directly submit possible improvements as pull requests.įurther information: History of free and open-source software A 2008 report by the Standish Group stated that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year for consumers. Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite.

Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. Open-source software ( OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose.

A screenshot of Manjaro running the Cinnamon desktop environment, Firefox accessing Wikipedia which uses MediaWiki, LibreOffice Writer, Vim, GNOME Calculator, VLC and Nemo file manager, all of which are open-source software.
