What is Open Source Software?

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved forcopyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.

Open source software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open-sourcedevelopment and often compared to (technically defined) user-generated content or (legally defined) open content movements.[1]

A report by the Standish Group states that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers

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