Open-source software is a type of software that’s publicly open for modification, free use, and distribution. The copyright holder grants license or control of the source code to anyone who wants to modify it for whatever reason. For example, all Arduino software is open source - we believe that it benefits everyone.

How does open source licensing work?

To understand open source, it’s important to know about Licensing Agreements. A Licensing Agreement is a legal contract in which a property owner allows others to use their brand, patent, or trademark.

These two parties will usually be called the licensor (the party who owns the brand/patent/trademark) and the licensee (the party seeking permission to use it). The agreement is also known as a contract, and sets out terms and conditions about how the two parties will work together.

This is to make sure that everyone is on the same page, and any potential disputes around sales, product quality, and commission are resolved before they rise.

How did open source start?

The idea of an open source material is not exclusive to software. It actually predates computers and the internet.

The idea of freely sharing technical information among peers, if not the public in general, can be traced back to scholarly, scientific works and inventions of ancient people whose discoveries were published in scroll manuscripts and accessible to all other scholars. This idea still exists today, serving as the foundation of academia.

But the modern economic-industrial application of freely sharing information among peers can be credited to Henry Ford. In 1911, Ford challenged the long-standing monopolist patent of George B. Selden on the two-cycle gasoline engine. As a result, a new association, the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, was formed. This group of manufacturers openly and freely shared patents among each other.

In the early development of software languages and applications in the 1950s and 1960s, academics were the ones who mainly worked on these projects. They shared these software ideas with corporate researchers under the public domain.

In 1953, the A-2 system developed at the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand was the first open-source software. The software was released to customers along with its source code. Customers were encouraged to make some modifications as part of a collective effort to improve the software.

Examples of Open Source Software

As operating systems and programming language compilers evolved, companies started to become more competitive and protective of their software products. Many applications, such as word processing and spreadsheets, fell under proprietary exclusivity.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, companies that developed software applications began charging license fees for their products instead of simply outright selling these products. Companies like IBM and AT&T no longer published source codes, but instead distributed machine executable code compiled from source code.

However, the informal sharing of software continued and the free software movement was born. Richard Stallman is considered to be the founder of this movement when, in 1983, he launched the GNU Project. The main objective of this project was to write a complete operating system that does not have the constraints on use of its source code. The movement launched open source software applications that include complete office applications and games.

Some of the best open source software applications that you can use today are the following:

• Mozilla Firefox - an internet browser that can be customized by users and developers
• LibreOffice - a complete office suite that includes a presentation application, word processor, spreadsheets, and databases
• GIMP - photo editing software available on various platforms, including Windows and Linux. Popular with photographers and graphic designers
• GNU Compiler Collection - a set of compilation tools that can be used by software developers writing their codes in C, C++, Ada, Fortran, and other programming languages
• PHP - a software development language mainly used in web development and several online digital platforms
• And, of course, Arduino - you can read our most recent open source report here

So how does open source come into it?

Open source is a type of licensing agreement. It allows people within the agreement to take an existing piece of work then use, modify, and integrate that piece of work into other projects.

Essentially, the open source model of licensing agreements is a collaborative one that encourages people to take the existing material, work on it themselves, and evolve and improve on what was there before.

In computing terms, open source usually means a computer program whose source code is available for everyone to redesign and examine without having to pay royalties or fees. Evolving through community collaboration, open source has allowed many projects to gain traction with the involvement of others.

Here at Arduino we support open-source hardware, publishing the initial specification in a software format so that everyone can get involved! Find out more about the how, what, and why on Arduino software by visiting the software page.

When was open source first used?

It’s difficult to say exactly when open source first came about, due to the existence of technical information long predating the internet and computing. For example, early industrial inventions often had what we now would call an open source approach, but some manufacturers preferred to keep their cards close to their chest.

The term as we understand it came about much later, during the free software movement led by programmer and campaigner Richard Stallman, who famously said, “free software is a matter of liberty. To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as ‘free speech’ not ‘free beer.”

The Open Source Initiative was founded in 1998, and acts as the steward of the open source definition.

Why is open source important?

Open source is crucial for innovation. It allows revolutionary creations to become even more sophisticated through community collaboration. Without it, we wouldn’t have half of the things that make our lives easier on a daily basis, including the internet.

The fundamental functions of the internet are actually built on open source technologies. From web servers and data storage to the transfer of information, it’s all possible thanks to open source computing.

Other advantages of open source include more refined outcomes of higher quality, better reliability, lower cost, and an end to corporations trading in ‘know-how’ for colossal costs and tight restrictions.