Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's sources. Some consider it as a philosophy, and others consider it as a pragmatic methodology. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet and its enabling of diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.The complexity of such communication relates to Brooks' law, and it is also described by Eric S. Raymond, "Brooks predicts that as your number of programmers N rises, work performed scales as N but complexity and vulnerability to bugs rises as N-squared. N-squared tracks the number of communications paths (and potential code interfaces) between developers' code bases." -- "The Revenge of the Hackers". 2000. Subsequently, open source software became the most prominent face of open source.

The open source model can allow for the concurrent use of different agendas and approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies.Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. ed 3.0. 2000.

History

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Those involved with journalism and open source intelligence used the earliest known practices of open source that focused on accessibility rather than modification of sources. Software developers used to commonly release their code under public domain until they wanted to control how such freely accessible sources are modified and distributed. Developers, like the Free Software Foundation, began to license their work, but they still kept it as free software.

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eWEEK at 25: Open Source Has Proven a Remarkably Fertile Platform
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:35:46 -0500
PC Week's (now eWEEK's) birth year 1984 was a busy one for technology. One platform that began to take shape at that time was focused not on hardware or software but on licensing. Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT to start the GNU project, an effort to produce a clone of the Unix operating system to be distributed under a license that would ensure users' freedom to run, modify and redistribute the software. The open-source model has since driven much innovation in enterprise technology. - Twenty-five years ago, this publication began chronicling the ecosystem that had sprung up around IBM's PC. It was a platform that proved remarkably fertile, owing not only to the quot;business-approved quot; blessing that came with the IBM brand but also to the platform's open architecture. ...
Microsoft Recommits to $100K Apache Contribution at ApacheCon
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:13:26 -0500
Microsoft may have helped its status with the open-source community by reiterating its pledge to deliver $100,000 to the Apache Software Foundation over the next few years. - Microsoft has again committed to its pledge to deliver $100,000 to the Apache Software Foundation over the next couple of years. Microsoft initially announced its plans to commit $100,000 a year to ASF in 2008 at OSCON (the O'Reilly Open Source Convention). This time, the software giant announc...
DebConf10 Debian Conference Set for August in NYC
Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:52:19 -0400
The Debian Project, the team behind the free Debian GNU/Linux operating system, announces that its next annual conference, DebConf10, will be held Aug. 1 to 7, 2010. - quot;The Debian Project, the team behind the free Debian GNU/Linux operating system, confirmed the dates and venue for its next annual conference, DebConf10, quot; the organization said in a statement Oct. 30. quot;The conference will take place from Aug. 1 to 7, 2010, at Columbia University, ...
Host it Your Way with OpenGoo Web Office
Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:44:27 -0400
Web-based office productivity applications such as Zoho Office and Google Apps offer deployment and collaboration advantages over their desktop-bound cousins. However, these applications tend to require that organizations house their data outside the company firewall and give up the option of switching host without losing access to the application. Enter OpenGoo, an open source licensed online productivity suite that can be run from any LAMP server. - Video Content....
Is Google Faking the Open-Source Funk?
Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:28:47 -0400
Some folks are claiming that Google is faking the open-source funk by not being as open as it could be about Android. - LONDON Some folks are claiming that Google is faking the open-source funk. OK, it's a lot to say, really. Because for all the open-source software Google has helped put forth, it's a bit of a stretch to imply that the company is faking it. But Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundat...
LABS GALLERY: Fedora 12 Beta Boasts Security, Management and Virtualization Updates
Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:41:08 -0400
Red Hat's Fedora 12, which has recently hit its beta milestone, continues in the tradition of previous Fedora releases by adding compelling enhancements in the areas of security, management and virtualization. Read about the features that have caught our eye so far, and see those features in action in the gallery below. -  ...

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Open Source Developers at Google: Amit Singh on MacFuse File systems provide one of the most familiar interfaces end users know. Since implementing a traditional file system is extremely complex and difficult, presenting information seamlessly through files and folders has typically been limited to a small set of select programmers--often kernel hackers who develop at the lowest layers of a system. The MacFUSE mechanism breaks this barrier on Mac