In production and development, open source is a philosophy, or pragmatic methodology that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product's design and implementation details. Before the phrase ''open source'' became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; ''open source'' gained hold with the rise of the Internet, and the attendant need for massive retooling of the computing source code. Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. The open-source software movement was born to describe the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created.

The open-source model includes the concept of concurrent yet different agendas and differing approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies. A main principle and practice of open-source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product, source-material, "blueprints", and documentation available at no cost to the public. This is increasingly being applied in other fields of endeavor, such as biotechnology.

History

The concept of free sharing of technological information existed long before computers. For example, cooking recipes have been shared since the beginning of human culture.

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 auto manufacturers: although each company would develop technology and file patents, these patents were shared openly and without the exchange of money between all the manufacturers. By the time the US entered World War 2, 92 Ford patents and 515 patents from other companies were being shared between these manufacturers, without any exchange of money (or lawsuits).

Very similar to open standards, researchers with access to Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) used a process called Request for Comments to develop telecommunication network protocols. This collaborative process of the 1960s led to the birth of the Internet in 1969.

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.

In a foreshadowing of the Internet, software with source code included became available on BBS networks in the 1980s. This was sometimes a necessity; distributing software written in BASIC and other interpreted languages can only be distributed as source code as there is no separate portable executable binary to distribute.

Example of BBS systems and networks that gathered source code, and setup up boards specifically to discuss its modification includes WWIV, developed initially in BASIC by Wayne Bell. A culture of "modding" his software and distributing the mods, grew up so extensively that when the software was ported to first Pascal, then C++, its source code continued to be distributed to registered users, who would share mods and compile their own versions of the software. This may have contributed to its being a dominant system and network, despite being outside the Fidonet umbrella that was shared by so many other BBS makers.

The sharing of source code on the Internet began when the Internet was relatively primitive, with software distributed via UUCP, Usenet, and irc, and gopher. Linux, for example, was first widely distributed by posts to comp.os.linux on the Usenet, which is also where its development was discussed. Linux became the archetype for organized software development orientated around the sharing of source code.

The label “open source” was adopted by a group of people in the free software movement at a strategy session held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator. The group of individuals at the session included Christine Peterson who suggested “open source”, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann and Eric S. Raymond. Over the next week, Raymond and others worked on spreading the word. Linus Torvalds gave an all-important sanction the following day. Phil Hughes offered a pulpit in ''Linux Journal''. Richard Stallman, pioneer of the free software movement, flirted with adopting the term, but changed his mind. Those people who adopted the term used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to free themselves of the ideological and confrontational connotations of the term "free software". Netscape released its source code under the Netscape Public License and later under the Mozilla Public License.

The term was given a big boost at 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 brought together 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 of Netscape, and Eric Raymond. At that meeting, the confusion caused by the name free software was brought up. 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 that evening. Five days later, Raymond made the first public call to the free software community to adopt the new term. The Open Source Initiative was formed shortly thereafter.

Starting in the early 2000s, a number of companies began to publish a portion of their source code to claim they were open source, while keeping key parts closed. This led to the development of the now widely used terms ''free open-source software'' and ''commercial open-source software'' to distinguish between truly open and hybrid forms of open source.

Economic analysis

Most economists agree that open-source candidates have an information good (also termed 'knowledge good') aspect. In general, this suggests that the original work involves a great deal of time, money, and effort. However, the cost of reproducing the work is very low, so that additional users may be added at zero or near zero cost — this is referred to as the marginal cost of a product. At this point, it is necessary to consider a copyright. The idea of copyright for works of authorship is to protect the incentive of making these original works. Copyright restriction then creates access costs on consumers who value the original more than making an additional copy but value the original less than the initial production cost. Thus, they will pay an access cost of this difference. Access costs also pose problems for authors who wish to create something based on another work but are not willing to pay the copyright holder for the rights to the copyrighted work. The second type of cost incurred with a copyright system is the cost of administration and enforcement of the copyright.

Being organized effectively as a consumers' cooperative, the idea of open source is then to eliminate the access costs of the consumer and the creator by reducing the restrictions of copyright. This will lead to creation of additional works, which build upon previous work and add to greater social benefit. Additionally some proponents argue that open source also relieves society of the administration and enforcement costs of copyright. Organizations such as Creative Commons have 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. Thus, on several fronts, there is an efficiency argument to be made on behalf of open-sourced goods.

Others argue that society loses through open-sourced goods. Because there is a loss in monetary incentive to the creation of new goods some argue that new products will not be created. This argument seems to apply particularly well to the business model where extensive research and development is done, e.g. pharmaceuticals. However, this argument ignores the fact that cost reduction for all concerned is perhaps an even better monetary incentive than is a price increase. In addition, others argue that visual art and other works of authorship should be free. These proponents of extensive open-source ideals argue that monetary incentive for artists would perhaps better be derived from performances or exhibitions, in a similar fashion to the funding of provision of other types of services.

Case study

An investigation of open-source industrial symbiosis was performed by Doyle and Pearce using Google Earth. Their paper found that virtual globes coupled with open-source waste information can be used to:

# Reduce embodied energy of transport by reducing distances to recycling facilities # Choose end-of-life at recycling facilities rather than landfills # Establish industrial symbiosis and Eco-industrial parks on known by-product synergies

Ultimately, the open-source sharing of information in virtual globes provide a means to identify economically and environmentally beneficial opportunities for waste management if the data have been made available.

Applications

Many fields of study and 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. For example, Linus Torvalds said, "the future is open source everything." 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 is less compelling. The broader impacts 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 by CAMBIA, and in the book ''Democratizing Innovation''. its argued that a trend toward democratized innovation in physical products is occurring like the free and open-source software movement. The difference between crowdsourcing and open source is that open-source production is a cooperative activity initiated and voluntarily undertaken by members of the public

Computer software

Open-source software is software whose 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 very large companies. Many of these individuals programmers who start an open source project usually end up as large companies with open source programs. Examples of open-source software products are:

Application software

7-Zip — file archiver

Blender — 3D graphics editor

Eclipse — development environment comprising an IDE

GIMP — graphics editor

Inkscape - Vector graphics editor for .svg

Mozilla Firefox — web browser

Chromium - web browser

Mozilla Thunderbird — e-mail client

NASA World Wind — virtual globe, geobrowser

OpenOffice.org (and the LibreOffice fork) - office suite

PrestaShop — Electronic commerce platform

ADempiere — (now Free Software forked from Compiere) an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Open Source Software platform for business

Operating systems

Android - operating system derived from Linux

FreeBSD — operating system derived from Unix

Linux — family of Unix-like operating systems

OpenIndiana — a free Unix-like operating system

ReactOS — operating system built on Windows NT architecture

Haiku — free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS

Programming languages

Perl — a general purpose programming language

PHP — scripting language suited for the web

Python — general purpose programming language

Ruby — general purpose programming language

Server software

Apache — HTTP web server

Drupal — content management system

MediaWiki — wiki server software, the software that runs Wikipedia

MongoDB — document-oriented, non-relational database

Moodle — course management system or virtual learning environment

WordPress — blog software

TYPO3 — enterprise content management system

Electronics

Open-source hardware is hardware whose initial specification, usually in a software format, are 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:

Openmoko: a family of open-source mobile phones, including the hardware specification and the operating system.

OpenRISC: an open-source microprocessor family, with architecture specification licensed under GNU GPL and implementation under LGPL.

Sun Microsystems's OpenSPARC T1 Multicore processor. Sun has released it under GPL. 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.

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.

Beverages

OpenCola — a cola soft drink, 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. Vores Øl beer — a beer created by students at the IT-University in Copenhagen together with Superflex, a Copenhagen-based artist collective, to illustrate how open-source concepts might be applied outside the digital world. In 2002, the beer company Brewtopia in Australia started an open-source brewery and invited the general population to be involved in the development and ownership of the brewery, and to vote on the development of every aspect of its beer, Blowfly, and its road to market. In return for their feedback and input, individuals received shares in the company, which is now publicly traded on a stock exchange in Australia. The company has always adhered to its open-source roots and is the only beer company in the world that allows the public to design, customise and develop its own beers online. Coffee: capsule-based beverage systems such as Nestle's ''Nespresso'' or Krups' ''Tassimo'' turn home-brewed coffee from an inherently "open-source" beverage into a product limited by the specific range of capsules made available by the system manufacturers.

Digital content

Open-content projects organized by the Wikimedia Foundation — Sites such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary have embraced the open-content GFDL and 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. An important site embracing open-source-like ideals is Project Gutenberg, which posts many books on which the copyright has expired and are thus in the public domain, ensuring that anyone can use that content for any purpose whatsoever.

Health and science

Medicine

Pharmaceuticals — There have been several proposals for open-source pharmaceutical development, which led to the establishment of the Tropical Disease Initiative. There are also a number of not-for-profit "virtual pharmas" such as the Institute for One World Health and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative. Genomics — The term "open-source genomics" was coined to describe 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.

Science

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 Source Science Project was created to increase the ability for students to participate in the research process by providing them access to microfunding — which, in turn, offers non-researchers the opportunity to directly invest, and follow, cutting-edge scientific research. All data and methodology is subsequently published in an openly accessible manner under a Creative Commons fair use license.

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 be made freely available to the entire photovoltaic community and the general public.

Robotics

An open-source robot is a robot whose blueprints, schematics, and/or source code are released under an open-source model.

Other

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. 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 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.

Society and culture

Open-source culture is the creative practice of appropriation and free sharing of found and created content. Examples include collage, found footage film, music, and appropriation art. Open-source culture is one in which fixations, works entitled to copyright protection, are made generally available. Participants in the culture can modify those products and redistribute them back into the community or other organizations.

The rise of open-source culture in the 20th century resulted from a growing tension between creative practices that involve appropriation, and therefore require access to content that is often copyrighted, and increasingly 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.

In the late 20th century, cultural practitioners began to adopt the intellectual property licensing techniques of free software and open-source software to make their work more freely available to others, including the Creative Commons.

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.

One way of achieving the goal of making the fixations of cultural work generally available is to maximally utilize technology and digital media. In keeping with Moore's law's prediction about processors, the cost of digital media and storage plummeted in the late 20th Century. Consequently, the marginal cost of digitally duplicating anything capable of being transmitted via digital media dropped to near zero. Combined with an explosive growth in personal computer and technology ownership, the result is an increase in general population's access to digital media. This phenomenon facilitated growth in open-source culture because it allowed for rapid and inexpensive duplication and distribution of culture. Where the access to the majority of culture produced prior to the advent of digital media was limited by other constraints of proprietary and potentially "open" mediums, digital media is the latest technology with the potential to increase access to cultural products. Artists and users who choose to distribute their work digitally face none of the physical limitations that traditional cultural producers have been typically faced with. Accordingly, the audience of an open-source culture faces little physical cost in acquiring digital media.

Open-source culture precedes Richard Stallman's codification of free software with the creation of the Free Software movement. As the public began to communicate through Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) like FidoNet, places like Sourcery Systems BBS were dedicated to providing source code to Public Domain, Shareware and Freeware programs.

Essentially born out of a desire for increased general access to digital media, the Internet is open-source culture's most valuable asset. It is questionable whether the goals of an open-source culture could be achieved without the Internet. The global network not only fosters an environment where culture can be generally accessible, but also allows for easy and inexpensive redistribution of culture back into various communities. Some reasons for this are as follows.

First, the Internet allows even greater access to inexpensive digital media and storage. Instead of users being limited to their own facilities and resources, they are granted access to a vast network of facilities and resources, some free. 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.

Second, users are granted unprecedented access to each other. Older analog technologies such as the telephone or television have limitations on the kind of interaction users can have. In the case of television there is little, if any interaction between users participating on the network. And in the case of the telephone, users rarely interact with any more than a couple of their known peers. On the Internet, however, users have the potential to access and meet millions of their peers. This aspect of the Internet facilitates the modification of culture as users are able to collaborate and communicate with each other across international and cultural boundaries. The speed in which digital media travels on the Internet in turn facilitates the redistribution of culture.

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.

Government

Open politics (sometimes known as ''Open-source politics'') is a term used to describe 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.

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.

Media

Open-source journalism, referred to the standard journalistic techniques of news gathering and fact checking, and reflected a similar term that was in use from 1992 in military intelligence circles, open-source intelligence. It is now commonly used to describe forms of innovative publishing of online journalism, rather than the sourcing of news stories by a professional journalist. In the December 25, 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 users who are 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 open document 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 end 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. 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 "The American Revolution," which went into production in 2005, 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 Filmmakers Collaborative. 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 film-maker 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.

Education

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.

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), disinterestedness (removing one's personal views from the scientific inquiry) and organized skepticism (requirements of proof and review) that accurately describe the scientific community today. 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.

Farmavita.Net is a community of pharmaceuticals executives that has recently proposed a new business model of open-source pharmaceuticals. The project is targeted to development and sharing of know-how for manufacture of essential and life-saving medicines. It is mainly dedicated to the countries with less developed economies where local pharmaceutical research and development resources are insufficient for national needs. It will be limited to generic (off-patent) medicines with established use. By the definition, medicinal product have a “well-established use” if is used for at least 15 years, with recognized efficacy and an acceptable level of safety. In that event, the expensive clinical test and trial results could be replaced by appropriate scientific literature.

Benjamin Franklin was an early contributor eventually donating all his inventions including the Franklin stove, bifocals, and the lightning rod to the public domain.

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.

See also

Lists

List of commercial open-source applications

List of open-source healthcare software

List of open-source software packages

List of open-source video games

List of trademarked open-source software

Terms based on open source

Open-source-appropriate technology

Open source economics

Open-source governance

Open-source hardware

Open Source Initiative

Open-source license

Open-source political campaign

Open-source record label

Open-source religion

Open-source robotics

Open-source software

Open source movement

Other

''Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution'' (book)

Business models for open source software

Collaborative intelligence

Commons-based peer production

Commercial open-source applications

Community source

Digital freedom

Diseconomy of scale

Embrace, extend and extinguish

Free Beer

Free software

Gift economy

Glossary of legal terms in technology

Halloween Documents

Linux

Network effect

Open access (publishing)

Open content

Open data

Open design

Open format

Open implementation

Open innovation

OpenJDK

Open research

Open security

OpenSolaris

Comparison of open source and closed source

Open system (computing)

Open standard

OpenDWG

Openness

Shared source

Vendor lock-in

References

Further reading

Karl Fogel. Producing Open Source Software (How to run a successful free-software project). Free PDF version available.

Nettingsmeier, Jörn. “So What? I Don’t Hack!” ''eContact! 11.3 — Logiciels audio « open source » / Open Source for Audio Application'' (September 2009). Montréal: CEC.

Various authors. ''eContact! 11.3 — Logiciels audio « open source » / Open Source for Audio Application'' (September 2009). Montréal: CEC.

Various authors. "Open Source Travel Guide [wiki]." ''eContact! 11.3 — Logiciels audio « open source » / Open Source for Audio Application'' (September 2009). Montréal: CEC.

Literature on legal and economic aspects

Berry, D. M. & Moss, G. (2008). Libre Culture: Meditations on Free Culture. Canada: Pygmalion Books. (in Adobe PDF format)

Bitzer, J. & Schröder, P. J.H. (2005): "The Impact of Entry and Competition by Open Source Software on Innovation Activity", Industrial Organization 0512001, EconWPA. (in Adobe Systems PDF format)

v. Engelhardt, S. (2008): "The Economic Properties of Software", Jena Economic Research Papers, Volume 2 (2008), Number 2008-045. (in Adobe PDF format)

v. Engelhardt, S. (2008): "Intellectual Property Rights and Ex-Post Transaction Costs: the Case of Open and Closed Source Software", Jena Economic Research Papers 2008-047. (in Adobe PDF format)

v. Engelhardt, S. & Swaminathan, S. (2008): "Open Source Software, Closed Source Software or Both: Impacts on Industry Growth and the Role of Intellectual Property Rights", Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 799. (in Adobe Systems PDF format)

European Commission. (2006). Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies sector in the EU. Brussels.

Feller, J., Fitzgerald, B. & Hissam, S. A. (eds.), (2005): Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, MIT Press.

earlier revision (PDF) earlier revision (PDF)

Rossi, M. A. (2006): Decoding the free/open source software puzzle: A survey of theoretical and empirical contributions, in J. Bitzer P. Schröder, eds, ‘The Economics of Open Source Software Development’, p 15–55. (download an online version) (in Adobe PDF format)

earlier revision

Spagnoletti P., Federici T. (2011). ''Exploring the Interplay Between FLOSS Adoption and Organizational Innovation'', Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS), Vol. 29, Art. 15, pp. 279–298

External links

The Changelog, a podcast and blog that covers what's fresh and new in Open Source (essentially covering "the changelog" of open source projects)

An open-source shot in the arm? The Economist, Jun 10th 2004,

SVForum Distinguished Speaker talks on Open Source Software by Guido van Rossum, Howard Rheingold, and Bruce Perens, 2005.

SVForum Global Open Source, March 24, 2008

Calendar of Open Source Events and Conferences World Wide

Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards

QualiPSo European Initiative

International Institute for Software Technology / United Nations University

UNU/IIST Open Source Software Certification

Calls for open source government

Open Source Open World — Open Standards Throughout the Globe

How to Contribute to Open Source Without Coding

Spanish National Open Source Software Observatory

Category:Computer law Category:Intellectual property law Category:Social information processing Category:Standards

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Name	Aaron J. Seigo
Birth place	British Columbia, Canada
Resting place coordinates
Residence	Zürich, Switzerland
Known for	KDE developer and KDE e.V. past president
Occupation	Software Developer
Website	aseigo

Aaron Joseph Seigo (born 1975 in British Columbia, Canada) is a Canadian open source software developer who lives in Zürich, Switzerland. He has been a KDE contributor since KDE 2 alphas release in 2000. Currently, he works primarily with the Plasma team as project leader and developer, and won Jury's Award of Akademy Awards 2008. He was president of KDE e.V. from July 2007 to July 2009.

References

External links

Blog of Aaron

KDE king Seigo talks life, free software and reinventing the desktop

Keynote Speaker at Akademy 2010: Aaron Seigo Interview

Category:KDE Category:Free software programmers Category:Living people Category:1975 births Category:Computer programmers

de:Aaron Joseph Seigo zh:Aaron Seigo

birth name	Rodney Mullen
birth date	August 17, 1966
birth place	Gainesville, Florida, U.S.
website	Rodneymullen.net
sport	Skateboarding
country	}}

John Rodney Mullen (August 17, 1966) is a professional freestyle and street skateboarder. Mullen is credited with inventing the kickflip, the heelflip, the impossible, 360 flip and many other tricks. Mullen has appeared in numerous skateboarding videos and has authored an autobiography entitled ''The Mutt: How to Skateboard and not Kill Yourself''.

In a 2009 video Mullen sums up his passion for skateboarding:

I fell in love with skateboarding because it was individual. There were no teams, there were no captains... it was completely opposite of what I saw in so many sports: It was creative.

Biography

Early life

Rodney Mullen grew up in Florida and began skateboarding at the age of ten, after a neighbourhood friend introduced him to a skateboard. He promised his worried father that he would stop the first time he became seriously injured. Mullen began practicing in full pads, as part of the deal with his dad, and hung out with his sister's surfer friends who skateboarded on weekdays. Mullen became obsessed with the skateboard and practiced for hours every day.

Skateboarding

In 1978, having owned a skateboard for less than a year, Rodney placed fifth in the Boy's Freestyle at the U.S. Open Championships at Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville. Skateboard manufacturer Bruce Walker saw his performance and sponsored Mullen through ''Walker Skateboards'' in 1978-1980. Mullen's biggest influence in skateboarding at the time was Walker pro skater Jim McCall. Mullen was coached in his early years by Bruce Walker (who also coached a young Kelly Slater).

In later years, Mullen was coached by Barry Zaritzky, aka SIO Barry. When his family moved to a farm in a remote part of Florida, Rodney began perfecting his flatground techniques in the family garage. Mullen cites the isolation and lack of terrain naturally influenced him toward freestyle skateboarding. Rodney cites 1979 - 1980 as his "most creative time". Mullen put together a string of 30 straight competitive amateur victories in the late 70s, mostly in his home state Florida, culminating in a win at the Oceanside Nationals in June, 1979.

In 1980, 14-year-old Rodney Mullen entered the Oasis Pro competition, defeating world champion Steve Rocco. Mullen later turned professional as a member of the ''Bones Brigade'' sponsored by ''Powell Peralta''. ''Powell Peralta'' was co-owned by Stacy Peralta, who Mullen highly admired. Mullen competed voraciously throughout the 80s—often frustrating both competitors and judges with his consistency and progressive ability. By 1990, Mullen had won 34 out of 35 freestyle competitions that he entered, having been beaten only once by fellow Bones Brigade member Per Welinder, due to Mullen falling over during his run. Mullen established the most successful competitive run in the history of the sport.

Despite Alan "Ollie" Gelfand's fame for inventing the ollie air (Gelfand's maneuver being primarily a transition-oriented trick) Mullen is responsible for the invention and development of the street ollie. The ability to pop the board off of the ground and land back on the board while moving has been the most significant development in modern skateboarding. The invention alone would rank Mullen one of the most important skateboarders of all time.

Throughout the 1980s, he invented the majority of skating's ollie and flip tricks, including the flatground ollie, the kickflip, the heelflip and many others. These tricks are now considered an essential part of modern vert and street skateboarding. In early 1989, Mullen left the ''Bones Brigade'' to join ''World Industries'' as a principal investor with longtime friend and former rival Steve Rocco. The choice was a gamble since Powell Peralta was an established company, while Rocco's upstart company was struggling and losing money.

Street skating

As the popularity of freestyle skateboarding declined, Mullen was urged to move his style toward street skating, which Mullen had refused to do. This is hinted at in the ''World Industries'' video ''Rubbish Heap'', where Mullen's sequence ends with team member Jeremy Klein breaking Rodney's freestyle skateboard, and handing him a note from Steve Rocco, symbolizing the end of freestyle.

In 1991, Mullen joined the high-profile skateboarding team ''Plan B''. Mike Ternasky, the owner of ''Plan B'', influenced Mullen to transition from freestyle to street skating, and showcased his skills in the 1992 Plan B video ''Questionable''. Mullen's segment begins with traditional freestyle tricks done on flat ground, but quickly accelerates across public terrain to shift into street skating. In relation to obstacles, he sequences tricks, mixes flip tricks with grinds and board slides. In the video, Mullen introduced two newly invented tricks, the kickflip underflip and the casper slide.

Mullen's ''Questionable'' performance may have marked the beginning of a new era in street skateboarding. His reluctant departure from freestyle to become a street skater was a symbol that legitimized the technical direction street skating had taken over the previous few years. Mullen specialized at this progression in subsequent ''Plan B'' videos, including 1993's ''Virtual Reality'', where Mullen showcases the newly-mastered Darkslide. Mullen's participation in Plan B dissolved after Mike Ternasky died in a car crash 1994. In 1997, Mullen started another company ''A-Team'', with the intent of forming a super team with the defection of ''Plan B'' from the ''World Industries'' empire. Rodney talked to friend and fellow pro Daewon Song to plan the video ''Rodney vs. Daewon'', which featured each skater competing in segments from trick to trick.

Mainstream success

Rodney Mullen has appeared in the ''Tony Hawk's Pro Skater'' video games, ''Underground'', Underground 2|Underground 2]]'', ''American Wasteland'', ''Proving Ground'' and ''Ride''. The ''A-Team'' folded in 2000 and Mullen went from company founder to company rider under former Maple rider Marc Johnson, who started ''Enjoi Skateboards''. Mullen left ''Enjoi'' to head ''Almost Skateboards'' with Daewon Song, the company which he still helms and skates for. Mullen's role at ''Almost'' includes research and development on new designs and technologies, including Tensor truck in 2000 and experimental and composite deck constructions for Dwindle brands.

After years of success and controversy, Steve Rocco decided to sell his company. In 2002, ''World Industries'' under the holding name Kubic Marketing, were sold to ''Globe International'' for $46 million, making Mullen and Rocco instant multi-millionaires. Kubic's management remained intact and Mullen began working for Globe under the ''Dwindle Distribution'' brand. In 2002, Mullen won the ''Transworld'' Readers' Choice Award for Skater of the Year. In 2003, Mullen wrote and released his autobiography entitled ''The Mutt: How to skateboard and not kill yourself''. In late 2003 he was voted as the all-time greatest action sports athlete on the Extreme Sports Channel's ''Legends of the Extreme'' countdown.

From 2007 to 2009, Mullen worked to erase his riding stance, allowing him to move from regular stance to goofy. In an interview with Tony Hawk, Mullen explained that he had developed problems in his right hip joint and that his transition between stances came out of an effort to favor his leg. He goes on to describe that scar tissue had built up in his joint as a result of habitually hyper-extending his leg while skating. Mullen stated that through extensive and consistent stretching he was able to tear away the scar tissue. In December 2010, Mullen stated in an interview that he was preparing to film a part for the upcoming Almost video.

Personal life

Rodney Mullen is married to his wife Traci. Mullen is nicknamed the Mutt.

Filmography

Powell Peralta: ''Skateboarding in the '80's'' (1982)

Powell Peralta: ''The Bones Brigade Video Show'' (1984)

Powell Peralta: ''Future Primitive'' (1985)

Powell Peralta: ''Public Domain'' (1988)

Gleaming the Cube ("Skate double", 1989)

World Industries: ''Rubbish Heap'' (1989)

Plan B: ''Questionable'' (1992)

Plan B: ''Virtual Reality'' (1993)

Plan B: ''Second Hand Smoke'' (1995)

''Rodney Mullen vs. Daewon Song'' (1997)

''Rodney Mullen Vs. Daewon Song Round 2'' (1999)

Globe: ''Opinion''

''Almost: Round Three'' (2004)

Transworld: ''Show Me the Way'' (Darkslide)

''Tony Hawk's Secret Skatepark Tour'' (2005)

''John from Cincinnati'' (Skate double, Episode 10, 2007)

Globe: ''United by Fate'' (2008)

Almost: "5 Incher" (2012)

References

Further reading

Brooke, M (1999). ''Concrete Wave: The History Of Skateboarding''. ISBN 1-894020-54-5.

Category:American skateboarders Category:Freestyle skateboarders Category:1966 births Category:Living people Category:University of Florida alumni Category:People from Gainesville, Florida

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name	Yochai Benkler
birth date	1964
occupation	Professor, Harvard Law School
spouse	Deborah Schrag
children	2
website	www.benkler.org
footnotes	}}

Yochai Benkler is an Israeli-American professor of Law and author. Since 2007, he has been the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Biography

In 1984, Benkler was the treasurer of Kibbutz Shizafon. He received his LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University in 1991 and J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1994. He worked at the law firm Ropes & Gray from 1994-1995. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer from 1995 to 1996.

He was a professor at New York University School of Law from 1996 to 2003, and visited at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School (during 2002-2003), before joining the Yale Law School faculty in 2003. In 2007, Benkler joined Harvard Law School, where he teaches and is a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Benkler is on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. In 2011, his research led him to receive the $100,000 Ford Foundation Social Change Visionaries Award.

Works

Benkler's research focuses on commons-based approaches to managing resources in networked environments. He coined the term 'commons-based peer production' to describe collaborative efforts based on sharing information, such as free and open source software and Wikipedia. He also uses the term 'networked information economy' to describe a "system of production, distribution, and consumption of information goods characterized by decentralized individual action carried out through widely distributed, nonmarket means that do not depend on market strategies."

Benkler's 2006 book ''The Wealth of Networks'' examines the ways in which information technology permits extensive forms of collaboration that have potentially transformative consequences for economy and society. Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Open Source Software and the blogosphere are among the examples that Benkler draws upon. (''The Wealth of Networks'' is itself published under a Creative Commons license). For example, Benkler argues that blogs and other modes of participatory communication can lead to "a more critical and self-reflective culture", where citizens are empowered by the ability to publicize their own opinions on a range of issues. Much of ''The Wealth of Networks'' is presented in economic terms, and Benkler raises the possibility that a culture in which information is shared freely could prove more economically efficient than one in which innovation is encumbered by patent or copyright law, since the marginal cost of re-producing most information is effectively nothing.

Benkler coined the term 'Jalt' as a contraction of jealousy and altruism, to describe the dynamic in commons-based peer production where some participants get paid while others do not, or "whether people get paid differentially for participating." The term was first introduced in his seminal paper "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm." It is described in more technical terms as "social-psychological component of the reward to support monetary appropriation by others or... where one agent is jealous of the rewards of another."

Benkler appeared in the documentary film ''Steal This Film'', which is available through Creative Commons. He discussed various issues, including: ''how the changing cost structures in film and music production are enabling new stratums of society to create.''

Benkler is a strong proponent of Wikileaks, characterizing it as a prime example of non-traditional media filling a public watchdog role left vacant by traditional news outlets. In a draft paper written for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review in February 2011, he uses governmental vilification and prosecution of Wikileaks as a case study demonstrating the need for more robust legal protection for independent media.

In August 2011, Benkler was a keynote speaker at the Wikimania conference in Haifa, Israel. That same August, Benkler's latest book on social cooperation online and off, titled ''The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest'', was published. Benkler discussed this book at a lecture given the Berkman Center at Harvard on October 18, 2011 .

Awards

March 2007 - EFF Pioneer Award. May 2011 - Ford Foundation Visionaries Award.

See also

Industrial information economy

Carr–Benkler wager

References

External links

Official page at Harvard Law School

Interview with Benkler

Speaking at Pop!Tech 2005

Online Edition of The Wealth of Networks

TED Talks: Yochai Benkler on the new open-source economics at TED in 2005

The Penguin and The Leviathan: The Science and Practice of Cooperation at The Santa Fe Institute 2010.

Wikipedia 1, Hobbes 0: Benkler's chair lecture at Harvard Law, as reported in the ''Harvard Law Record''

From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation. Toward Sustainable Commons and User Access

Category:1964 births Category:Access to Knowledge activists Category:Access to Knowledge movement Category:American people of Israeli descent Category:American legal scholars Category:Copyright activists Category:Copyright scholars Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Harvard Law School faculty Category:New York University faculty Category:Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Category:Living people Category:Tel Aviv University alumni

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