"Open source software is typically free and comes with the source code needed to adapt it to users' needs. Most open source licenses let users redistribute the software, including possible changes, and charge for redistribution as long as source code changes are publicly available" (http://www.opensource.org).

Typology

"There are two types of open source software.

Community open source is software that a community develops. Rather than a single corporate entity owning the software, a sometimes broad community of volunteers determines which contributions are accepted into the source code base and where the software is headed. Individual developers, the committers, and not a specific company, make decisions about the software, as in the case of the Apache Web server (http://httpd.apache.org)

Commercial open source is software that a for-profit entity owns and develops. The company maintains the copyright and determines what is accepted into the software code base and what to implement next, as in the case of MySQL and its MySQL database (http://www.mysql.com)." (http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2007/computer-2007-article.html)

Open Source Software

Typology

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