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1. Introduction on open source
The term “Free Software” is based on the idea of making software accessible to anyone for free,
including the right for everyone to make improvements to it. This implies that the source code is
provided with the software product.
To protect the rights of the authors, a formal approach through licenses has been introduced through
Richard Stallman, a former member of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, with the founding of the Free
Software Foundation (FSF) in 1984. Stallman’s goal was to develop a UNIX-compatible operating system
called GNU (= GNU’s not UNIX) which should give users a portable, no-cost alternative to the various
UNIX systems that were specific to each hardware vendor. He planned to achieve this by gradually
replacing the proprietary versions of the UNIX system software components with his and other
voluntary 11 contributor’s developments. To protect the author’s copyright, as well as to guarantee the
free use of derivatives of the GNU work, the FSF developed the GNU General Public License (GPL). Some
products available under the GNU Public License, such as EMACS or the GNU C Compiler became widely
used, but only the introduction of Linux under the GPL pushed the idea of free software to a new level of
interest. With Linux’s growing market share, the business world took notice of the free software
movement. The restrictive GNU public license with its idealistic view, however, led to the development
of other public licenses that seemed more appropriate for business purposes, while taking advantage of
the ideas of free software. The introduction of these other licenses, such as the BSD, MIT X, Mozilla, or
Artistic licenses, increased the confusion about the meaning of free software and Open Source.
Therefore, community members developed a specification called “The Open Source Definition” in 1997.
This specification establishes guidelines for software licenses to be considered “Open Source”.