Open source

Open-source software is computer software with its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. The Open Source Definition simply allows redistribution under the same terms, but does not require it. According to “The Political Economy of Open Source Software “by Steven Weber, some licenses that fall under the Open Source Definition (for example, Netscape’s Mozilla Public License or MPL) entitle a programmer to modify the software and release the modified version under new terms, that include making it proprietary. The benefits to Open Source are that has high reliability, low cost, and better features. According to “Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue” by Yochai Benkler and Helen Nissenbaum, such means of production generates new modes of contributing to the public good by facilitating the collaborative engagement of thousands of ordinary individuals in the voluntary, creative, communal, regular, non-commercial production of intellectual and cultural goods, for a wide variety of reasons and motives. The open source type of production is always at risk for hackers, those who break into a developer’s coding and obtaining all they data associated with it.