This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Computing: Software / Free and open-source software Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Software. This article is supported by Free and open-source software (assessed as High-importance). Open ( inactive) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Open, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.OpenWikipedia:WikiProject OpenTemplate:WikiProject OpenOpen articles

This page has been cited as a source by a notable professional or academic publication: Harvard Journal of Law & Technology

I have doubts about the fundamental claims of this article. The sharing principle is somewhat older than open source, or even free software. For example, peer review and the sharing of knowledge has been institutionalized in science since at least the ninteenth century, and I don't think even that is the earliest example of the institutionalization of sharing as an ethic.

How, then, is the open source movement qualified to take credit for opening up of course curricula, greater distribution of findings in science, etc.? These points, at least, must be discussed. -- CYD

The free software movement was important in making a political statement in intellectual property freedom. Indeed, peer review and sharing of knowledge inside the scientific community is most definitely not based on freedom in the same sense that free software is, indeed, when scientists publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, they're usually required to sign away the exclusive rights to reproduction and archiving to those journals, who consequently make large amounts of money from selling subscriptions as well as access to their archives. -- Joakim Ziegler

However, scientists have no restrictions on quoting, using, and building on the results published by other scientists. That is a very similar procedure; not identical, but the medium isn't identical.

I don't doubt that open source / free software ideas have had *some* impact; some of the examples in the article offered have been pretty good. However, I've yet to see a credible and convincing study of the broader impact of the "open source movement". After all, weblogs, the USENet, and various collaborative efforts on the Internet have existed long before 1998. If they had been invented later, I suppose they would be dubbed "open source" too. At this point, this is largely speculation, at least from my POV :-) -- CYD

WOW I wish there were timestamps on the comments! IBM acquiring Red Hat software for $34 BILLION puts to rest the notion FOSS didn't have impact. It's true "Open Source" was used and abused as a marketing term, and it's a shame the public doesn't know about the near simultaneous "Open Standards" within that were start by PC clonemakers like Compaq "colluding". But in hindsight CYD, you are as completely wrong, as most of your contemporaries were — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.37.128 ( talk) 20:10, 5 July 2021 (UTC) reply

Hmmm... this article seems pretty inaccurate. Did BSD licenses really first start in 1998? I think not. Perhaps the coverage of the OSF open source movement should be distinct from the coverage of the generic open source movement? At the moment this, and a fair bit of the other open source coverage, reads as a description of the OSF rather than the open source movement and open source in general. Any thoughts on how to correct this so that the full history and culture of open source is included, not just the recent, though very popular, OSF version of it? -- Jamesday 04:59, 11 May 2004 (UTC) reply

I don't see your point- the BSD claim is gone anyway; but the point of the '98 figure was that the open source movement began several many years after Stallman and the free software movement. -- maru 16:12, 18 May 2005 (UTC) reply

About Linux Actually Linus Torvalds created Linux first and later changed licence to GPL. That helped some practical issues. Before Linus used some self-made licenses. Info about that founds he book, named Just for Fun, named to be written by Linus himself.

-- Ilari Halminen ( talk) 17:19, 2 April 2012 (UTC) reply

to be a bit pedantic, Linux was using software "tools" of the GNU operating system, which may have been covered before the linux kernel itself was Opened. To the original question; the original "four clause" BSD license in 1988 had an advertising requirement that it appear in ALL advertisement produced with BSD products. You have to realize that code wasn't formally legally recognized as copy-rightable until 1983 Apple vs Franklin about BIOS code. Around 1982, IBM had threatened to sue PC clonemakers for BIOS code copyright violation, but they settled instead. They were probably wary of the possibility of rulings going against them. For BSD in particular, many thought it should be put in Public Domain, rather than seeking legal copyright status for defending it. A licence embraces copyright law, which is mostly about setting restrictions, so its counter-intuitive to depend on them for enforcing the right to copy and re-distribute. I think 1990 might have been the establishment of BSD (2.0?) license, as far as formal, legally examined BSD licenses was much later than one might think. Even later were Public-domain-equivalent licenses like Do What the Fuck You Want To Public License (2000). The situation legally was much more fluid and dynamic, and U.S. law follows Common Law, where nothing is truly "legal" until it is tested in court. That's why BIOS copyright wasn't 1983, even though IBM could threaten legal action years earlier.

I don't get why people keep re-adding this. Furthermore, it makes even less sense to keep in something totally inaccurate just for the sake of having an intro paragraph. The "it's better to have POV/completely inaccurate information than have none at all" mantra makes no sense. There's no evidence that this movement is an "offshoot" of the free software movement, especially considering it follows a different, contradicting philosophy. This philosophy is as old as dirt, BSD was open sourced in '89, a project which was completely independent of FSF/GNU anything.

It's not just "pragmatic concerns." And the usage of the word "propaganda" to describe open source movement's literature is extremely POV. There's also this misleading statement that keeps getting cited in these articles that the movement was just suddenly founded in 1998, as if the OSI represents the whole of the movement and its start. Even The Cathedral and the Bazaar predates that, along with major open source projects (e.g. BSDs). Nathan J. Yoder 00:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC) reply

I'm skeptical that there is an open source "movement". There is a free software movement - it's a social movement to win the freedom for everyone to help themselves and each other. Open source, on the other hand, is a marketing campaign for the software. Richard Stallman often used the term "open source movement" in the past, and I always disagreed with him that such a thing existed. Now it seems that he is no longer convinced of its existence [1]. I don't see how "open source" is a Social movement. It is an initiative, but calling it that would be confusing since the Open Source Initiative name is taken. Is campaign an accurate term for what "open source" is? Gronky 15:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC) reply

After thinking more about this, the content of this page and the scope of this page are both contained between the articles open-source software, open source, Open Source Initiative, and free software movement - and the topic of this article doesn't exist as a topic itself. Which means this article should be merged into the mentioned 4 articles (which wouldn't be hard since it seems to only duplicate information on the mentioned 4 articles). Gronky 20:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC) reply

Open Source Initiative describes open source as a "marketing program". I think I agree with their description, although "marketing campaign" seems to be a more appropriate description. What do people think about renaming this article to "Open-source marketing campaign" and merging the duplicate info into "open-source software" and have this article as being just about the marketing campaign that has been running from 1998 until now? Gronky 15:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC) reply

After still more thought, I think the best route would be to merge this into the Open Source Initiative article. Gronky 18:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC) reply

This article should be deleted because there is no such thing as a "Open Source software movement". It is merely a source code disclosure concept which some companies chose as part of their business model. Many people/companies do that, but many people doing the same thing alone does not make them a movement. On the other hand, the Free Software movement is a movement, since it explicitly follows a political and philosophical ideology, has institutions and followers around the world and is much more than just a concept of disclosing source code. You can distinguish the difference quite easily: A company that defines it product as "open source" can - and many have done that and many are going to do it in future - just switch their license over night to a proprietary one (or some "Open Core" model), because they saw it fit for their business objectives and are not attached to any moral concerns about any ideology. A company that defined its product as "Free Software" to turn over night into proprietary should be an extremely seldom case, since their self-definition of Free Software included much more than just a business model or license choice - it included the whole ideology of the Free Software movement. -- Tomakos ( talk) 20:48, 9 January 2018 (UTC) reply

Could you please provide links for those claims: "Microsoft's intense attacks on the GPL in 2001" and the "SCO lawsuit attacking the Linux kernel in 2003"? Thank you

Open source movement → Open-source movement — like Open-source software — Neustradamus ( ✉) 16:35, 14 January 2010 (UTC) reply

• Support. Unless it's a trade name (in which case the "s" in "source" should be capitalised), the normal English grammar rules should apply. Wikipedia is not required to use bad grammar unless it is specifically intended. WP:HYPHEN notes that hyphens are used "to link related terms in compound adjectives and adverbs." This is standard English usage on both sides of the pond (e.g., see Betty Schrampfer Azar. Understanding and Using English Grammar. 2nd ed. p. 203.) The Open Source Initiative organization follows this usage when the term is used as an adjective as it is used in the titles here ( "...all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.", "Therefore we forbid any open-source license from locking...") — AjaxSmack 17:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC) reply

Discussion moved to Talk:List of free and open source software packages#Requested move. Jafeluv ( talk) 16:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC) reply

• That discussion was closed no concensus after 34 days Anthony Appleyard ( talk) 11:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC) reply

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of free and open source software packages which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RM bot 16:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC) reply

• That discussion was closed no concensus after 3 days Anthony Appleyard ( talk) 11:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC) reply

I am not sure about the mention of "wikipedia" in this section. Surely "Mediawiki" should be listed here instead, as that is the software that is used to run wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.57.219 ( talk) 18:14, 15 March 2011 (UTC) reply

I added a cn not because I doubt the statement but because it looks like an unattributed quote. I would actually like to see this section expanded, to combat the impression given elsewhere that open source is about MIT twenty years ago, but the citations do need work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elinruby ( talk • contribs) 03:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC) reply

POV -- I actually think that open software *does* promote the dissemination of knowledge, but this is a value statement that is not supported here. Prove it or delete it.

Fact -- the sentence makes it sound as though open source is a clone of proprietary software. The analogous software is usually quite different, actually -- functionality may be similar, but code is not the same. I suspect the statement cannot be supported given Linux vs Windows and GIMP vs Photoshop, so the statement should be rewritten to be true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elinruby ( talk • contribs) 03:54, 4 November 2011 (UTC) reply

"General Public License (GPL) was one of the open source licenses that served as a prohibitory of control over software codes"

appears to be an English-language issue but needs to say what it means to say then back it up. Elinruby ( talk) 04:12, 4 November 2011 (UTC) reply

over-reliance on an interested party and a single outdated link (2000, paleontology by internet standards) insufficient as back-up for claim taking credit for open source.

discussion of pros and cons of different licenses should link to a more technical discussion.

correction -- *two* outdated links, one an interview with Eric Raymond, plus a page written by Eric Raymond. Elinruby ( talk) 04:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC) reply

Conventional usage in English is to hyphenate compound adjectives. Thus, the use of "open source" as an adjective rightly ought to be "open-source", as in "open-source code" or "the open-source movement". I did not, however, want to just burn through the whole article making that change if there is any substantial resistance to it. (Why there might be is unguessable to me, but this is Wikipedia.) 63.174.56.82 ( talk) 03:55, 11 November 2011 (UTC) reply

OK, I see now that this issue has been raised before (the section titles are not very indicative). I still feel it is a change that badly needs to be made. Any objections? (If so, for what reasons?) 63.174.56.82 ( talk) 03:58, 11 November 2011 (UTC) reply

The Free software movement has a strong historical context with Open source movement. To should be mentioned in the lede. Belorn ( talk) 16:59, 22 April 2012 (UTC) reply

The Free software movement is not mentioned in the Ideologically related movements section. It should be, given its close historical relation with the Open source movement, and its prominence as an ideologically related movement. Belorn ( talk) 17:52, 22 April 2012 (UTC) reply

Why is the entire first paragraph of the Adoption Section all about how libraries use and adopt open source? That is oddly specific for a more generalized (than that) section title. 71.173.216.98 ( talk) 23:08, 31 May 2012 (UTC) reply

Where should Open-source software movement redirect? Here? See related discussion at Talk:Free_software_movement#Free_and_open-source_software_movement. -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:26, 3 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Open-source software movement should redirect to /dev/null, since there is no such movement. Open Source is a source code disclosing concept, and there is no movement whatsoever behind it. There is a Free Software movement, though. This article should be deleted. -- Tomakos ( talk) 20:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC) reply

I agree. "Open source" is a commercial strategy, not a movement. "Free software" is a movement with followers, an ideology and a manifesto.

I can't imagine any ideological reason for people to want to blur that distinction; so I can only suppose that those persistently calling for merges are just ignorant (and too lazy to read the illuminating material that might dispel the darkness of their ignorance). MrDemeanour ( talk) 14:20, 5 May 2018 (UTC) reply

I agree entirely with @Tomakos and @MrDemeanour. This article should be somehow merged with the "open-source software" article. Daveout ( talk) 01:55, 19 March 2020 (UTC) reply

The following six refs were all named "ref_e":

• <ref name="ref_e_OEdb">OEDb. (2007, March 1). How the Open Source Movement Has Changed Education: 10 Success Stories. Retrieved November 22, 2009, from Online Education Database</ref>
• <ref name="ref_e_Stallman">Stallman, R. M. (2007). Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source". Retrieved November 22, 2009, from GNU.org</ref>
• <ref name="ref_e_Tennant">Tennant, D. (2008, August 11). Standing on Principle. Computerworld, p. 4. Retrieved from Business Source Premier database.</ref>
• <ref name="ref_e_Warger">Warger, T. </ref>
• <ref name="ref_e_Elliott">Elliott, M. S.; Scacchi, Walt (2008). "Mobilization of software developers: The free software movement". Information Technology & People. 21 (1): 4. doi: 10.1108/09593840810860315.</ref>
• <ref name="ref_e_TnL"> "The case for open source: Open source has made significant leaps in recent years. what does it have to offer education?". Technology & Learning. 27 (7): 16. 2007.</ref>

There are now 13 different <ref name="ref_e"/> that need to pointed at their intended refs. Paradoctor ( talk) 13:45, 8 January 2016 (UTC) reply

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Open-source software movement. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090309020736/http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/archives/page9905.cfm to http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/archives/page9905.cfm
• Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.softwarecompany.org/advantages-open-source-software.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{ source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 17:39, 12 January 2018 (UTC) reply

"Open-source-software movement" strikes me as a rather unorthodox construction. "Software" is a noun, and "open-source" is a compound adjective; I am unaware of any English-language convention that calls for compounding a compound in this matter. I would think the title should be "Open-source software"; I have heard, on occasion, of a prescription requiring open compound adjectives to be compounded with an endash, rather than a hyphen (I personally find this to be quite silly, since the function of a dash is to separate, rather than compound; it's the very thing that's supposed to distinguish it from a hyphen in the first place, but whatever...), so I suppose an argument could be made for "Open–source software movement", but I can't think of a plausible argument in favor of "Open-source-software movement". Joefromrandb ( talk) 02:13, 20 October 2020 (UTC) reply

The argument is that here open-source software is a compound modifying movement. There's no argument for the way you did it with an en dash, but some would argue for open-source–software movement, with the en dash binding less strongly than the hyphen; but two hyphens is not unconventional. It's not also unconventional to omit one or more such hyphens in complicated compound, ad let the reader puzzle out what modifies what. Dicklyon ( talk) 14:42, 20 October 2020 (UTC) reply

You're certainly more knowledgeable than I about such matters, so if the title looks kosher to you that's good enough for me. Joefromrandb ( talk) 03:03, 21 October 2020 (UTC) reply

Please, no en dash. Generally I try to avoid triples, but we're happy to accept 12-year-old girl, US, UK, everywhere. To take the logic further: "open-source-software-movement lobbying". Let's hope we never have to use it. So the current name should probably be left as it is. Tony (talk) 13:15, 21 October 2020 (UTC) reply