by

Open Source Display Software

Fortunately, there are a number of great open source dashboard tools out there that make the job much easier. On one end of the spectrum are open source business intelligence tools, like BIRT or Pentaho. But for a smaller project, tools like these could be overkill, and in some cases, you might be able to find a dashboard tool that is already. It is worth noting that as Xibo is an Open Source solution and therefore does not need to be downloaded from our website the number of Xibo CMS installations and monthly downloads will be considerably higher than the CMS installations that we are aware of. OpenLP is an open-source presentation platform created for use in churches large and small. Say good-bye to the hassle of subscription costs and device platforms; this software offers a wide variety of features that will greatly benefit your worship service. OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.

Data and instructions are sent to the GPU for processing. The rendered results are stored in a framebuffer, whose content is scanned by the display controller and sent to the screen.

A free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-renderingapplication programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license. Graphics device drivers are written for specific hardware to work within a specific operating system kernel and to support a range of APIs used by applications to access the graphics hardware. They may also control output to the display if the display driver is part of the graphics hardware. Most free and open-source graphics device drivers are developed by the Mesa project. The driver is made up of a compiler, a rendering API, and software which manages access to the graphics hardware.

Drivers without freely (and legally) -available source code are commonly known as binary drivers. Binary drivers used in the context of operating systems that are prone to ongoing development and change (such as Linux) create problems for end users and package maintainers. These problems, which affect system stability, security and performance, are the main reason for the independent development of free and open-source drivers. When no technical documentation is available, an understanding of the underlying hardware is often gained by clean-room reverse engineering. Based on this understanding, device drivers may be written and legally published under any software license.

In rare cases, a manufacturer's driver source code is available on the Internet without a free license. This means that the code can be studied and altered for personal use, but the altered (and usually the original) source code cannot be freely distributed. Solutions to bugs in the driver cannot be easily shared in the form of modified versions of the driver. Therefore the utility of such drivers is significantly reduced comparison to free and open-source drivers.

  • 1Problems with binary drivers
  • 3Software architecture
  • 4Free and open-source drivers
    • 4.1ATI and AMD

Problems with binary drivers[edit]

Software developer's view[edit]

Illustration of the Linux graphics stack

There are objections to binary-only drivers based on copyright, security, reliability and development concerns. As part of a wider campaign against binary blobs, OpenBSD lead developer Theo de Raadt said that with a binary driver there is 'no way to fix it when it breaks (and it will break)'; when a product which relies on binary drivers is declared to be end-of-life by the manufacturer, it is effectively 'broken forever.'[1] The project has also stated that binary drivers[2] 'hide bugs and workarounds for bugs',[3] an observation which has been somewhat vindicated by flaws found in binary drivers (including an exploitablebug in Nvidia's 3D drivers discovered in October 2006 by Rapid7). It is speculated that the bug has existed since 2004; Nvidia have denied this, asserting that the issue was only communicated to them in July 2006 and the 2004 bug was a bug in X.Org (not in Nvidia's driver).[4]

Binary drivers often do not work with current versions of open-source software, and almost never support development snapshots of open-source software; it is usually not directly possible for a developer to use Nvidia's or ATI's proprietary drivers with a development snapshot of an X server or a development snapshot of the Linux kernel. Features like kernel mode-setting cannot be added to binary drivers by anyone but the vendors, which prevents their inclusion if the vendor lacks capacity or interest.

In the Linux kernel development community, Linus Torvalds has made strong statements on the issue of binary-only modules: 'I refuse to even consider tying my hands over some binary-only module .. I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules, it's their problem'.[5] Another kernel developer, Greg Kroah-Hartman, has said that a binary-only kernel module does not comply with the kernel's license (the GNU General Public License); it 'just violates the GPL due to fun things like derivative works and linking and other stuff.'[6] Writer and computer scientist Peter Gutmann has expressed concern that the digital rights management scheme in Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system may limit the availability of the documentation required to write open drivers, since it 'requires that the operational details of the device be kept confidential.'[7]

Driver Agere Systems PCI-SV92EX Soft Modem is a software program developed by LSI. Upon being installed, the software adds a Windows Service which is designed to run continuously in the background. Manually stopping the service has been seen to cause the program to stop functing properly.

In the case of binary drivers, there are objections due to free software philosophy, software quality and security concerns.[8] In 2006 Greg Kroah-Hartman concluded that:

'Closed source Linux kernel modules are illegal. That's it, it is very simple. I've had the misfortune of talking to a lot of different IP lawyers over the years about this topic, and every one that I've talked to all agree that there is no way that anyone can create a Linux kernel module, today, that can be closed source. It just violates the GPL due to fun things like derivative works and linking.'[9]

The Linux kernel has never maintained a stable in-kernel application binary interface.[10] There are also concerns that proprietary drivers may contain backdoors, like the one found in Samsung Galaxy-series modem drivers.[11]

Hardware developer's view[edit]

In the future, libGL-fglrx-glx could use the libDRM of the Radeon open-source driver instead of the proprietary binary blob; most of the investment is in the userspace driver.

When applications such as a 3D game engine or a 3D computer graphics software shunt calculations from the CPU to the GPU, they usually use a special-purpose API like OpenGL or Direct3D and do not address the hardware directly. Because all translation (from API calls to GPU opcodes) is done by the device driver, it contains specialized knowledge and is an object of optimization. Due to the history of the rigidity of proprietary driver development there has been a recent surge in the number of community-backed device drivers for desktop and mobile GPUs. Free and Open Hardware organizations like FOSSi, LowRISC, and others, would also benefit from the development of an open graphical hardware standard. This would then provide computer manufacturers, hobbyists, and the like with a complete, royalty-free platform with which to develop computing hardware and related devices.

The desktop computer market was long dominated by PC hardware using the x86/x86-64 instruction set and GPUs available for the PC. With three major competitors (Nvidia, AMD and Intel). The main competing factor was the price of hardware and raw performance in 3D computer games, which is greatly affected by the efficient translation of API calls into GPU opcodes. The display driver and the video decoder are inherent parts of the graphics card: hardware designed to assist in the calculations necessary for the decoding of video streams. As the market for PC hardware has dwindled, it seems unlikely that new competitors will enter this market and it is unclear how much more knowledge one company could gain by seeing the source code of other companies' drivers.

The mobile sector presents a different situation. The functional blocks (the application-specific integrated circuit display driver, 2- and 3D acceleration and video decoding and encoding) are separate semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) blocks on the chip, since hardware devices vary substantially; some portable media players require a display driver that accelerates video decoding, but do not require 3D acceleration. The development goal is not only raw 3D performance, but system integration, power consumption and 2D capabilities. There is also an approach which abandons the traditional method (Vsync) of updating the display and makes better use of sample and hold technology to lower power consumption.

During the second quarter of 2013 79.3 percent of smartphones sold worldwide were running a version of Android,[12] and the Linux kernel dominates smartphones. Hardware developers have an incentive to deliver Linux drivers for their hardware but, due to competition, no incentive to make these drivers free and open-source. Additional problems are the Android-specific augmentations to the Linux kernel which have not been accepted in mainline, such as the Atomic Display Framework (ADF).[13] ADF is a feature of 3.10 AOSP kernels which provides a dma-buf-centric framework between Android's hwcomposer HAL and the kernel driver. ADF significantly overlaps with the DRM-KMS framework. ADF has not been accepted into mainline, but a different set of solutions addressing the same problems (known as atomic mode setting) is under development. Projects such as libhybris harness Android device drivers to run on Linux platforms other than Android.

Performance comparisons[edit]

Glxgears is not well-suited for benchmarking.[14]

Phoronix, which compares free drivers, is a source for real-world testing:

  • 19 March 2011[15]
  • 31 March 2013[16]
  • A 29 April 2013 comparison of FOSS and proprietary drivers[17]
  • A 27 October 2013 comparison of proprietary drivers on Windows 8.1 and Linux[18]
  • A 25 January 2014 comparison of FOSS drivers on Linux[19]
  • A 27 January 2014 comparison of proprietary drivers on Linux[20]
  • A 19 March 2014 comparison of Ubuntu with the Free and open-source graphics device driver distributed as part of Mesa 3D, which outperforms Mac OS X 10.9.2 when playing OpenGL-based Xonotic on a 2013 MacBook Air.[21]
  • A January 2017 comparison indicated a difference in power between the Mesa Nouveau and NVidia driver and Kepler and Maxwell. Reclocking is needed for Maxwell in Nouveau to increase level to Kepler. A gap to Mesa exists by 30 to 50% in basic efficiency of driver against Nvidia in all chips.[22]
  • A February 2017 comparison indicated that Mesa 17.1dev was equal to or better than the AMD GPU driver 16.60 in OpenGL and 20-30 percent lower in Vulkan.[23]
  • A March 2017 comparison indicated improvements in Mesa for RadeonSI between versions 11.1 and 17.1.[24]
  • A June 2017 Comparison Windows 10 Radeon Software vs. Ubuntu 17.04 + Linux 4.12 + Mesa 17.2-dev -> Result mesa radeonsi at same level [25]
  • A October 2017 Comparison RadeonSI/RADV Mesa 17.3 + AMDGPU DC vs. the proprietary NVIDIA 387.12 Linux Gaming Performance -> Result: Nvidia clear in lead [26]
  • 2018-02: Comparison Mesa 12 to 18 with AMD R580 and R9 Fury for OpenGL and Vulkan Tests [27]
  • 2018-06: Comparison Mesa 18.2 versus Nvidia Driver 396 with Nvidia GeForce Cards 680 and higher [28]
  • 2018-07: Comparison Mesa RadeonSI 18.0, 18.1, 18.2 and RadV with Radeon RX Cards [29]
  • 2018-10: Comparison AMD Closed Driver 18.40, AMDVLK and Mesa RadeonSI 18.2, 18.3 [30]
  • 2018-11: Comparison 25 AMD and Nvidia Cards with Mesa 19.0dev and NVIDIA Driver 415 [31]
  • 2019-01: Comparison Linux 5.0 + Mesa 19.0dev + AMD RX Cards and NVIDIA GeForce Driver 415 with Nvidia Cards [32]
  • 2019-01: Comparison Mesa 18.2, 18.3, 19.0dev RadeonSI/RADV with AMD RX Cards [33]

It is uncommon for video-game magazines to report benchmark testing on Linux. Benchmarks on Phoronix are limited in scope, primarily testing games which are available on Linux and support automated benchmarking.[34]

Software architecture[edit]

Although Mesa (DRI) and Gallium3D have different driver models, they share free and open-source code.
An example matrix of the Gallium3D driver model. With the introduction of the Gallium3D tracker and WinSys interfaces, 18 modules are required instead of 36. Each WinSys module can work with each Gallium3D device driver module and each State Tracker module.

Free and open-source drivers are primarily developed on and for Linux by Linux kernel developers, third-party programming enthusiasts and employees of companies such as Advanced Micro Devices. Each driver has five parts:

  1. A Linux kernel component DRM
  2. A Linux kernel component KMS driver (the display controller driver)
  3. A libDRM user-space component (a wrapper library for DRM system calls, which should only be used by Mesa 3D)
  4. A Mesa 3D user-space component. This component is hardware-specific; it is executed on the CPU and translates OpenGL commands, for example, into machine code for the GPU. Because the device driver is split, marshalling is possible. Mesa 3D is the only free and open-source implementation of OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, GLX, EGL and OpenCL. In July 2014, most of the components conformed to Gallium3D specifications. A fully functional State Tracker for Direct3D version 9 is written in C, and an unmaintained tracker for Direct3D versions 10 and 11 is written in C++.[35]Wine has Direct3D version 9. Another Wine component translates Direct3D calls into OpenGL calls, working with OpenGL.
  5. Device Dependent X (DDX), another 2D graphics device driver for X.Org Server

The DRM is kernel-specific. A VESA driver is generally available for any operating system. The VESA driver supports most graphics cards without acceleration and at display resolutions limited to a set programmed in the video BIOS by the manufacturer.[36]

History[edit]

The Linux graphics stack has evolved, detoured by the X Window System core protocol.

  • 2D drivers in the X server

  • Indirect rendering over GLX using Utah GLX

  • Direct Rendering Infrastructure and framebuffer

  • All access goes through the Direct Rendering Manager

  • In Linux kernel 3.12, render nodes are merged and mode setting split off. Wayland implements direct rendering over EGL.

Free and open-source drivers[edit]

ATI and AMD[edit]

Radeon[edit]

Linux device drivers for AMD hardware in August 2016

AMD's proprietary driver, AMD Catalyst for their Radeon, is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux (formerly fglrx). A current version can be downloaded from AMD's site, and some Linux distributions contain it in their repositories. It is in the process of being replaced with an AMDGPU-PRO hybrid driver combining the open-source kernel, X and Mesa multimedia drivers with closed-source OpenGL, OpenCL and Vulkan drivers derived from Catalyst.

The FOSS drivers for ATI-AMD GPUs are being developed under the name Radeon (xf86-video-ati or xserver-xorg-video-radeon). They still must load proprietary microcode into the GPU to enable hardware acceleration.[37][failed verification]

Radeon 3D code is split into six drivers, according to GPU technology: the radeon, r200 and r300 classic drivers and r300g, r600g and radeonsi Gallium3D drivers:

  • Radeon supports the R100 series.
  • R200 supports the R200 series.
  • R300g supports pre-unified shader model microarchitectures: R300, R400 and R500.
  • R600g supports all TeraScale (VLIW5/4)-based GPUs: R600, R700, HD 5000 (Evergreen) and HD 6000 (Northern Islands).
  • Radeonsi supports all Graphics Core Next-based GPUs: HD 7000, HD 8000 and Rx 200 (Southern Islands, Sea Islands and Vulcanic Islands).

An up-to-date feature matrix is available,[38] and there is support for Video Coding Engine[39] and Unified Video Decoder.[40][41] The free and open-source Radeon graphics device drivers are not reverse-engineered, but are based on documentation released by AMD without the requirement to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).[42][43][44] Documentation began to be gradually released in 2007.[45][46][47] This is in contrast to AMD's main competitor in the graphics field, Nvidia, which has a proprietary driver similar to AMD Catalyst but provides no support to free-graphics initiatives.[48]

In addition to providing the necessary documentation, AMD employees contribute code to support their hardware and features.[39] At the 2014 Game Developers Conference, The company announced that they were exploring a strategy change to re-base the user-space part of Catalyst on a free and open-source DRM kernel module instead of their proprietary kernel blob.[49]

All components of the Radeon graphics device driver are developed by core contributors and interested parties worldwide. In 2011, the r300g outperformed Catalyst in some cases.

AMDGPU[edit]

The release of the AMDGPU stack was announced on the dri-devel mailing list in April 2015.[50] Although AMDGPU only officially supports GCN 1.2 and later graphics cards,[51] experimental support for GCN 1.0 and 1.1 graphics cards (which are only officially supported by the Radeon driver) may be enabled via a kernel parameter.[52][53] A separate libdrm, libdrm-amdgpu, has been included since libdrm 2.4.63.[54]

Nvidia[edit]

Screenshot of REnouveau, a program which collects data for most of Nouveau's reverse-engineering work

Nvidia's proprietary driver, Nvidia GeForce driver for GeForce, is available for Windows XPx86-x86-64 and later, Linux x86-x86-64-ARMv7-A, OS X 10.5 and later, Solaris x86-x86-64 and FreeBSD x86/x86-64. A current version can be downloaded from the Internet, and some Linux distributions contain it in their repositories. The 4 October 2013 beta Nvidia GeForce driver 331.13 supports the EGL interface, enabling support for Wayland in conjunction with this driver.[55][56]

Nvidia's free and open-source driver is named nv.[57] It is limited (supporting only 2D acceleration), and Matthew Garrett, Dirk Hohndel and others have called its source code confusing.[58][59][60] Nvidia decided to deprecate nv, not adding support for Fermi or later GPUs and DisplayPort, in March 2010.[61]

In December 2009, Nvidia announced they would not support free graphics initiatives.[48] On 23 September 2013 The company announced that they would release some documentation of their GPUs.[62]

Nouveau is based almost entirely on information gained through reverse engineering. This project aims to produce 3D acceleration for X.Org/Wayland using Gallium3D.[63] On March 26, 2012, Nouveau's DRM component was marked stable and promoted from the staging area of the Linux kernel.[64] Nouveau supports Tesla- (and earlier), Fermi-, Kepler- and Maxwell-based GPUs.[65] On 31 January 2014, Nvidia employee Alexandre Courbot committed an extensive patch set which adds initial support for the GK20A (Tegra K1) to Nouveau.[66] In June 2014, Codethink reportedly ran a Wayland-based Westoncompositor with Linux kernel 3.15, using EGL and a '100% open-source graphics driver stack' on a Tegra K1.[67] A feature matrix is available.[68] In July 2014, Nouveau was unable to outperform the Nvidia GeForce driver due to missing re-clocking support. Tegra-re is a project which is working to reverse-engineer nVidia's VLIW-based Tegra series of GPUs that predate Tegra K1.[69]

Nvidia distributes proprietary device drivers for Tegra through OEMs and as part of its Linux for Tegra (formerly L4T) development kit.[70] Nvidia and a partner, Avionic Design, were working on submitting Grate (free and open-source drivers for Tegra) upstream of the mainline Linux kernel in April 2012.[71][72]The company's co-founder and CEO laid out the Tegra processor roadmap with Ubuntu Unity at the 2013 GPU Technology Conference.[73]

Open Source Display Software

Nvidia's Unified Memory driver (nvidia-uvm.ko), which implements memory management for Pascal and Volta GPUs on Linux, is MIT licensed. The source code is available in the Nvidia Linux driver downloads on systems that support nvidia-uvm.ko.

Intel[edit]

Intel has a history of producing (or commissioning) open-source drivers for its graphics chips, with the exception of their PowerVR-based chips.[74] Their 2D X.Org driver is called xf86-video-intel. The kernel mode-setting driver in the Linux kernel does not use the video BIOS for switching video modes; since some BIOSes have a limited range of modes, this provides more reliable access to those supported by Intel video cards.

The company worked on optimizing their free Linux drivers for performance approaching their Windows counterparts, especially on Sandy Bridge and newer hardware where performance optimizations have allowed the Intel driver to outperform their proprietary Windows drivers in certain tasks, in 2011.[75][76][77] Some of the performance enhancements may also benefit users of older hardware.[78]

Support for Intel's LLC (Last Level Cache, L4-Cache, Crystalwell and Iris Pro) was added in Linux kernel 3.12,[79][80] and the company has 20 to 30 full-time Linux graphics developers.[81]

Matrox[edit]

Matrox develops and manufactures the Matrox Mystique, Parhelia, G200, G400 and G550. Although the company provides free and open-source drivers for their chipsets which are older than the G550; chipsets newer than the G550 are supported by a closed-source driver.

S3 Graphics[edit]

S3 Graphics develops the S3 Trio, ViRGE, Savage and Chrome, supported by OpenChrome.[82]

Arm Holdings[edit]

Arm Holdings is a fabless semiconductor company which licenses semiconductor intellectual property cores. Although they are known for the licensing the ARM instruction set and CPUs based on it, they also develop and license the Mali series of GPUs. On January 21, 2012, Phoronix reported that Luc Verhaegen was driving a reverse-engineering attempt aimed at the Arm Holdings Mali series of GPUs (specifically, the Mali-200 and Mali-400 versions). The reverse-engineering project, known as Lima, was presented at FOSDEM on February 4, 2012.[83][84] On February 2, 2013, Verhaegen demonstrated Quake III Arena in timedemo mode, running on top of the Lima driver.[85] In May 2018, a Lima developer posted the driver for inclusion in the Linux kernel.[86]

ARM has indicated no intention of providing support for their graphics acceleration hardware licensed under a free and open-source license. However, ARM employees sent patches for the Linux kernel to support their ARM HDLCD display controller and Mali DP500, DP550 and DP650 SIP blocks in December 2015 and April 2016.[87][88]

Imagination Technologies[edit]

Imagination Technologies is a fabless semiconductor company which develops and licenses semiconductor intellectual property cores, among which are the PowerVR GPUs. Intel has manufactured a number of PowerVR-based GPUs. PowerVR GPUs are widely used in mobile SoCs. The company does not provide a FOSS driver or public documentation for the PowerVR. Due to its wide use in embedded devices, the Free Software Foundation has put reverse-engineering of the PowerVR driver on its high-priority project list.[89]

Vivante[edit]

Vivante Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company which licenses semiconductor intellectual property cores and develops the GCxxxx series of GPUs. A Vivante proprietary, closed-source Linux driver consists of kernel- and user-space parts. Although the kernel component is open-source (GPL), the user-space components—consisting of the GLES(2) implementations and a HAL library—are not; these contain the bulk of the driver logic.

Wladimir J. van der Laan found and documented the state bits, command stream and shader ISA by studying how the blobs work, examining and manipulating command-stream dumps. The Etnaviv Gallium3D driver is being written based on this documentation. Van der Laan's work was inspired by the Lima driver, and the project has produced a functional-but-unoptimized Gallium3D LLVM driver. The Etnaviv driver has performed better than Vivante's proprietary code in some benchmarks, and it supports Vivante's GC400, GC800, GC1000, GC2000, and GC3000 series.[90] In January 2017, Etnaviv was added to Mesa with both OpenGL ES 2.0 and Desktop OpenGL 2.0 support.[91]

Qualcomm[edit]

Qualcomm develops the Adreno (formerly ATI Imageon) GPU series, and includes it as part of their Snapdragon system. Phoronix and Slashdot reported in 2012 that Rob Clark, inspired by the Lima driver, was working on reverse-engineering drivers for the Adreno GPU series.[92][93] In a referenced blog post, Clark wrote that he was doing the project in his spare time and that the Qualcomm platform was his only viable target for working on open 3D graphics. His employers (Texas Instruments and Linaro) were affiliated with the ImaginationPowerVR and ARM Mali cores, which would have been his primary targets; he had working command streams for 2D support, and 3D commands seemed to have the same characteristics.[94] The driver code was published on Gitorious 'freedreno',[95]and has been moved to Mesa.[96][97] In 2012, a working shader assembler was completed;[98]demonstration versions were developed for texture mapping[99] and phong shading,[100] using the reverse-engineered shader compiler.Clark demonstrated Freedreno running desktop compositing, the XBMC media player and Quake III Arena at FOSDEM on February 2, 2013.[101]

In August 2013, the kernel component of freedreno (MSM driver) was accepted into mainline and is available in Linux kernel 3.12 and later.[102] The DDX driver gained support for server-managed file descriptors requiring X.Org Server version 1.16 and above in July 2014.[103] In January 2016, the Mesa Gallium3D-style driver gained support for Adreno 430;[104] in November of that year, the driver added support for the Adreno 500 series.[105] Freedreno can be used on devices such as 96Boards Dragonboard 410c and Nexus 7 (2013) in traditional Linux distributions (like Debian and Fedora) and on Android.

Broadcom[edit]

The Mesa driver for VideoCore4, VC4, was written from scratch by Broadcom's Eric Anholt.[106]

Broadcom develops and designs the VideoCore GPU series as part of their SoCs. Since it is used by the Raspberry Pi, there has been considerable interest in a FOSS driver for VideoCore.[107] The Raspberry Pi Foundation, in co-operation with Broadcom, announced on October 24, 2012 that they open-sourced 'all the ARM (CPU) code that drives the GPU'.[citation needed] However, the announcement was misleading; according to the author of the reverse-engineered Lima driver, the newly open-sourced components only allowed message-passing between the ARM CPU and VideoCore but offered little insight into Videocore and little additional programability.[108] The Videocore GPU runs an RTOS which handles the processing; video acceleration is done with RTOS firmware coded for its proprietary GPU, and the firmware was not open-sourced on that date.[109] Since there was neither a toolchain targeting the proprietary GPU nor a documented instruction set, no advantage could be taken if the firmware source code became available. The Videocoreiv project[110] attempted to document the VideoCore GPUs.

On February 28, 2014 (the Raspberry Pi's second anniversary), Broadcom and the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the release of full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license.[111][112] The free-license 3D graphics code was committed to Mesa on 29 August 2014,[113] and first appeared on Mesa's 10.3 release.

Other vendors[edit]

Although Silicon Integrated Systems and VIA Technologies have expressed limited interest in open-source drivers, both have released source code which has been integrated into X.Org by FOSS developers.[60] In July 2008, VIA opened documentation of their products to improve its image in the Linux and open-source communities.[114] The company has failed to work with the open-source community to provide documentation and a working DRM driver, leaving expectations of Linux support unfulfilled.[115] On January 6, 2011, it was announced that VIA was no longer interested in supporting free graphics initiatives.[116]

DisplayLink announced an open-source project, Libdlo,[117] with the goal of bringing support for their USB graphics technology to Linux and other platforms. Its code is available under the LGPL license,[118] but it has not been integrated into an X.Org driver. DisplayLink graphics support is available through the kernel udlfb driver (with fbdev) in mainline and udl/drm driver, which in March 2012 was only available in the drm-next tree.

Non-hardware-related vendors may also assist free graphics initiatives. Red Hat has two full-time employees (David Airlie and Jérôme Glisse) working on Radeon software,[119] and the Fedora Project sponsors a Fedora Graphics Test Week event before the launch of their new Linux distribution versions to test free graphics drivers.[120] Other companies which have provided development or support include Novell and VMware.

Open hardware projects[edit]

Assembled Project VGA graphics board
Open Graphics Project prototype

Project VGA aims to create a low-budget, open-source VGA-compatible video card.[121]The Open Graphics Project aims to create an open-hardware GPU. The Open Graphics Device v1 has dual DVI-I outputs and a 100-pin IDC connector. In September 2010, the first 25 OGD1 boards were made available for grant application and purchase.[122] The Milkymistsystem on a chip, targeted at embedded graphics instead of desktop computers, supports a VGA output, a limited vertex shader and a 2D texturing unit.[123]

The Nyuzi,[124] an experimental GPGPU processor, includes a synthesizable hardware design written in System Verilog, an instruction set emulator, an LLVM-based C-C++ compiler, software libraries and tests and explores parallel software and hardware. It can run on a Terasic DE2-115 field-programmable gate array board.[125][126]

If a project uses FPGAs, it generally has a partially (or completely) closed-source toolchain. There are currently a couple of open-source toolchains available, however, for Lattice-based FPGAs (notably for iCE40 and ECP5 boards) which utilize Project IceStorm[127], and Trellis[128], respectively. There is also a larger, ongoing effort to create the 'GCC of FPGAs' called SymbiFlow[129] which includes the aforementioned FPGA toolchains as well as an early-stage open-source toolchain for Xilinx-based FPGAs.

See also[edit]

  • Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI)

References[edit]

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  2. ^'What does 'binary' means in device driver?'. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
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  4. ^'Linux - How does the Rapid7 Advisory R7-0025 affect the NVIDIA Unix driver?'.
  5. ^'a/lt-binary'.
  6. ^Kroah-Hartman, Greg. 'Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel'. linux kernel monkey log.
  7. ^Peter Gutmann (2006-12-26). 'A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection'. Retrieved 2007-01-28.Cite journal requires journal= (help)
  8. ^Linux Weekly News, Aug 14, 2006: X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules
  9. ^Greg Kroah-Hartman (2006). 'Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel'. Linux Symposium.
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  12. ^'Android Nears 80% Market Share In Global Smartphone Shipments, As iOS And BlackBerry Share Slides, Per IDC'.
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  14. ^'free3d.org FAQ'. Is glxgears an accurate measure of 3D performance? No, it sucks in multiple ways.
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External links[edit]

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Open Source
  • Status updates for three graphics drivers (Nouveau, amdgpu and Etnaviv) LWN.net 2015
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Free_and_open-source_graphics_device_driver&oldid=916847273'
A screenshot of Linux Mint running the Xfcedesktop environment, Mozilla Firefox browsing Wikipedia powered by MediaWiki, a calculator program, the built in calendar, Vim, GIMP, and the VLC media player, all of which are open-source software.

Open-source software (OSS) is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.[1] Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration.[2]

Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. A 2008 report by the Standish Group stated that adoption of open-source software models have resulted in savings of about $60 billion (£48 billion) per year for consumers.[3][4]

  • 1History
  • 2Definitions
  • 3Open-source software development
  • 4Comparisons with other software licensing/development models
  • 5Current applications and adoption

History[edit]

End of 1990s: Foundation of the Open Source Initiative[edit]

In the early days of computing, programmers and developers shared software in order to learn from each other and evolve the field of computing. Eventually, the open-source notion moved to the way side of commercialization of software in the years 1970–1980. However, academics still often developed software collaboratively. For example, Donald Knuth in 1979 with the TeX typesetting system[5] or Richard Stallman in 1983 with the GNU operating system.[6] In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and free-software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as free software. This source code subsequently became the basis behind SeaMonkey, Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and KompoZer.

Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the Free Software Foundation's free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code.[7] The new term they chose was 'open source', which was soon adopted by Bruce Perens, publisher Tim O'Reilly, Linus Torvalds, and others. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage use of the new term and evangelize open-source principles.[8]

While the Open Source Initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by the concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code. A Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that 'open source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business.'[9] However, while Free and open-source software has historically played a role outside of the mainstream of private software development, companies as large as Microsoft have begun to develop official open-source presences on the Internet. IBM, Oracle, Google and State Farm are just a few of the companies with a serious public stake in today's competitive open-source market. There has been a significant shift in the corporate philosophy concerning the development of FOSS.[10]

The free-software movement was launched in 1983. In 1998, a group of individuals advocated that the term free software should be replaced by open-source software (OSS) as an expression which is less ambiguous[11][12][13] and more comfortable for the corporate world.[14] Software developers may want to publish their software with an open-source license, so that anybody may also develop the same software or understand its internal functioning. With open-source software, generally anyone is allowed to create modifications of it, port it to new operating systems and instruction set architectures, share it with others or, in some cases, market it. Scholars Casson and Ryan have pointed out several policy-based reasons for adoption of open source – in particular, the heightened value proposition from open source (when compared to most proprietary formats) in the following categories:

  • Security
  • Affordability
  • Transparency
  • Perpetuity
  • Interoperability
  • Flexibility
  • Localization – particularly in the context of local governments (who make software decisions). Casson and Ryan argue that 'governments have an inherent responsibility and fiduciary duty to taxpayers' which includes the careful analysis of these factors when deciding to purchase proprietary software or implement an open-source option.[15]

The Open Source Definition presents an open-source philosophy and further defines the terms of use, modification and redistribution of open-source software. Software licenses grant rights to users which would otherwise be reserved by copyright law to the copyright holder. Several open-source software licenses have qualified within the boundaries of the Open Source Definition. The most prominent and popular example is the GNU General Public License (GPL), which 'allows free distribution under the condition that further developments and applications are put under the same licence', thus also free.[16]

The open source label came out of a strategy session held on April 7, 1998 in Palo Alto in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator (as Mozilla). A group of individuals at the session included Tim O'Reilly, Linus Torvalds, Tom Paquin, Jamie Zawinski, Larry Wall, Brian Behlendorf, Sameer Parekh, Eric Allman, Greg Olson, Paul Vixie, John Ousterhout, Guido van Rossum, Philip Zimmermann, John Gilmore and Eric S. Raymond.[17] They used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to clarify a potential confusion caused by the ambiguity of the word 'free' in English.

Many people claimed that the birth of the Internet, since 1969, started the open-source movement, while others do not distinguish between open-source and free software movements.[18]

The Free Software Foundation (FSF), started in 1985, intended the word 'free' to mean freedom to distribute (or 'free as in free speech') and not freedom from cost (or 'free as in free beer'). Since a great deal of free software already was (and still is) free of charge, such free software became associated with zero cost, which seemed anti-commercial.[7]

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was formed in February 1998 by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens. With at least 20 years of evidence from case histories of closed software development versus open development already provided by the Internet developer community, the OSI presented the 'open source' case to commercial businesses, like Netscape. The OSI hoped that the use of the label 'open source', a term suggested by Christine Peterson[6][19] of the Foresight Institute at the strategy session, would eliminate ambiguity, particularly for individuals who perceive 'free software' as anti-commercial. They sought to bring a higher profile to the practical benefits of freely available source code, and they wanted to bring major software businesses and other high-tech industries into open source. Perens attempted to register 'open source' as a service mark for the OSI, but that attempt was impractical by trademark standards. Meanwhile, due to the presentation of Raymond's paper to the upper management at Netscape—Raymond only discovered when he read the press release,[20] and was called by Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale's PA later in the day—Netscape released its Navigator source code as open source, with favorable results.[21]

Definitions[edit]

The logo of the Open Source Initiative

The Open Source Initiative's (OSI) definition is recognized by several governments internationally[22] as the standard or de facto definition. In addition, many of the world's largest open-source-software projects and contributors, including Debian, Drupal Association, FreeBSD Foundation, Linux Foundation, OpenSUSE Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation, Wordpress Foundation have committed[23] to upholding the OSI's mission and Open Source Definition through the OSI Affiliate Agreement.[24]

OSI uses The Open Source Definition to determine whether it considers a software license open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Perens.[25][26][27] Perens did not base his writing on the 'four freedoms' from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which were only widely available later.[28]

Under Perens' definition, open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on the use and modification of the code. It is an explicit 'feature' of open source that it puts very few restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user, in order to enable the rapid evolution of the software.[29]

Despite initially accepting it,[30]Richard Stallman of the FSF now flatly opposes the term 'Open Source' being applied to what they refer to as 'free software'. Although he agrees that the two terms describe 'almost the same category of software', Stallman considers equating the terms incorrect and misleading.[31] Stallman also opposes the professed pragmatism of the Open Source Initiative, as he fears that the free software ideals of freedom and community are threatened by compromising on the FSF's idealistic standards for software freedom.[32] The FSF considers free software to be a subset of open-source software, and Richard Stallman explained that DRM software, for example, can be developed as open source, despite that it does not give its users freedom (it restricts them), and thus doesn't qualify as free software.[33]

Open-source software licensing[edit]

When an author contributes code to an open-source project (e.g., Apache.org) they do so under an explicit license (e.g., the Apache Contributor License Agreement) or an implicit license (e.g. the open-source license under which the project is already licensing code). Some open-source projects do not take contributed code under a license, but actually require joint assignment of the author's copyright in order to accept code contributions into the project.[34]

Examples of free software license / open-source licenses include Apache License, BSD license, GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, MIT License, Eclipse Public License and Mozilla Public License.

The proliferation of open-source licenses is a negative aspect of the open-source movement because it is often difficult to understand the legal implications of the differences between licenses. With more than 180,000 open-source projects available and more than 1400 unique licenses, the complexity of deciding how to manage open-source use within 'closed-source' commercial enterprises has dramatically increased. Some are home-grown, while others are modeled after mainstream FOSS licenses such as Berkeley Software Distribution ('BSD'), Apache, MIT-style (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), or GNU General Public License ('GPL'). In view of this, open-source practitioners are starting to use classification schemes in which FOSS licenses are grouped (typically based on the existence and obligations imposed by the copyleft provision; the strength of the copyleft provision).[35]

An important legal milestone for the open source / free software movement was passed in 2008, when the US federal appeals court ruled that free software licenses definitely do set legally binding conditions on the use of copyrighted work, and they are therefore enforceable under existing copyright law. As a result, if end-users violate the licensing conditions, their license disappears, meaning they are infringing copyright.[36]Despite this licensing risk, most commercial software vendors are using open source software in commercial products while fulfilling the license terms, e.g. leveraging the Apache license.[37]

Certifications[edit]

Certification can help to build user confidence. Certification could be applied to the simplest component, to a whole software system. The United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology,[38] initiated a project known as 'The Global Desktop Project'. This project aims to build a desktop interface that every end-user is able to understand and interact with, thus crossing the language and cultural barriers. The project would improve developing nations' access to information systems. UNU/IIST hopes to achieve this without any compromise in the quality of the software by introducing certifications.[39]

Open-source software development[edit]

Development model[edit]

In his 1997 essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar,[40]open-source evangelistEric S. Raymond suggests a model for developing OSS known as the bazaar model. Raymond likens the development of software by traditional methodologies to building a cathedral, 'carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation'.[40] He suggests that all software should be developed using the bazaar style, which he described as 'a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches.'[40]

In the traditional model of development, which he called the cathedral model, development takes place in a centralized way. Roles are clearly defined. Roles include people dedicated to designing (the architects), people responsible for managing the project, and people responsible for implementation. Traditional software engineering follows the cathedral model.

The bazaar model, however, is different. In this model, roles are not clearly defined. Gregorio Robles[41] suggests that software developed using the bazaar model should exhibit the following patterns:

Users should be treated as co-developers
The users are treated like co-developers and so they should have access to the source code of the software. Furthermore, users are encouraged to submit additions to the software, code fixes for the software, bug reports, documentation etc. Having more co-developers increases the rate at which the software evolves. Linus's law states, 'Given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.' This means that if many users view the source code, they will eventually find all bugs and suggest how to fix them. Note that some users have advanced programming skills, and furthermore, each user's machine provides an additional testing environment. This new testing environment offers that ability to find and fix a new bug.
Early releases
The first version of the software should be released as early as possible so as to increase one's chances of finding co-developers early.
Frequent integration
Code changes should be integrated (merged into a shared code base) as often as possible so as to avoid the overhead of fixing a large number of bugs at the end of the project life cycle. Some open source projects have nightly builds where integration is done automatically on a daily basis.
Several versions
There should be at least two versions of the software. There should be a buggier version with more features and a more stable version with fewer features. The buggy version (also called the development version) is for users who want the immediate use of the latest features, and are willing to accept the risk of using code that is not yet thoroughly tested. The users can then act as co-developers, reporting bugs and providing bug fixes.
High modularization
The general structure of the software should be modular allowing for parallel development on independent components.
Dynamic decision-making structure
There is a need for a decision-making structure, whether formal or informal, that makes strategic decisions depending on changing user requirements and other factors. Compare with extreme programming.

Data suggests, however, that OSS is not quite as democratic as the bazaar model suggests. An analysis of five billion bytes of free/open source code by 31,999 developers shows that 74% of the code was written by the most active 10% of authors. The average number of authors involved in a project was 5.1, with the median at 2.[42]

Advantages and disadvantages[edit]

Open source software is usually easier to obtain than proprietary software, often resulting in increased use. Additionally, the availability of an open source implementation of a standard can increase adoption of that standard.[43] It has also helped to build developer loyalty as developers feel empowered and have a sense of ownership of the end product.[44]

Moreover, lower costs of marketing and logistical services are needed for OSS. It is a good tool to promote a company's image, including its commercial products.[45] The OSS development approach has helped produce reliable, high quality software quickly and inexpensively.[46]

Open source development offers the potential for a more flexible technology and quicker innovation. It is said to be more reliable since it typically has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software. Open source is not dependent on the company or author that originally created it. Even if the company fails, the code continues to exist and be developed by its users. Also, it uses open standards accessible to everyone; thus, it does not have the problem of incompatible formats that may exist in proprietary software.

It is flexible because modular systems allow programmers to build custom interfaces, or add new abilities to it and it is innovative since open source programs are the product of collaboration among a large number of different programmers. The mix of divergent perspectives, corporate objectives, and personal goals speeds up innovation.[47]

Moreover, free software can be developed in accord with purely technical requirements. It does not require thinking about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of the software. Commercial pressures make traditional software developers pay more attention to customers' requirements than to security requirements, since such features are somewhat invisible to the customer.[48]

It is sometimes said that the open source development process may not be well defined and the stages in the development process, such as system testing and documentation may be ignored. However this is only true for small (mostly single programmer) projects. Larger, successful projects do define and enforce at least some rules as they need them to make the teamwork possible.[49][50] In the most complex projects these rules may be as strict as reviewing even minor change by two independent developers.[51]

Not all OSS initiatives have been successful, for example SourceXchange and Eazel.[44] Software experts and researchers who are not convinced by open source's ability to produce quality systems identify the unclear process, the late defect discovery and the lack of any empirical evidence as the most important problems (collected data concerning productivity and quality).[52] It is also difficult to design a commercially sound business model around the open source paradigm. Consequently, only technical requirements may be satisfied and not the ones of the market.[52] In terms of security, open source may allow hackers to know about the weaknesses or loopholes of the software more easily than closed-source software. It depends on control mechanisms in order to create effective performance of autonomous agents who participate in virtual organizations.[53]

Development tools[edit]

In OSS development, tools are used to support the development of the product and the development process itself.[54]

Revision control systems such as Concurrent Versions System (CVS) and later Subversion (SVN) and Git are examples of tools, often themselves open source, help manage the source code files and the changes to those files for a software project.[55] The projects are frequently hosted and published on source-code-hosting facilities such as Launchpad.[56]

Open source projects are often loosely organized with 'little formalised process modelling or support', but utilities such as issue trackers are often used to organize open source software development.[54] Commonly used bugtrackers include Bugzilla and Redmine.[57]

Tools such as mailing lists and IRC provide means of coordination among developers.[54] Centralized code hosting sites also have social features that allow developers to communicate.[56]

Organizations[edit]

Some of the 'more prominent organizations' involved in OSS development include the Apache Software Foundation, creators of the Apache web server; the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit which as of 2012 employed Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating systemkernel; the Eclipse Foundation, home of the Eclipse software development platform; the Debian Project, creators of the influential Debian GNU/Linux distribution; the Mozilla Foundation, home of the Firefox web browser; and OW2, European-born community developing open source middleware. New organizations tend to have a more sophisticated governance model and their membership is often formed by legal entity members.[58]

Open Source Software Institute is a membership-based, non-profit (501 (c)(6)) organization established in 2001 that promotes the development and implementation of open source software solutions within US Federal, state and local government agencies. OSSI's efforts have focused on promoting adoption of open source software programs and policies within Federal Government and Defense and Homeland Security communities.[59]

Open Source for America is a group created to raise awareness in the United States Federal Government about the benefits of open source software. Their stated goals are to encourage the government's use of open source software, participation in open source software projects, and incorporation of open source community dynamics to increase government transparency.[60]

Mil-OSS is a group dedicated to the advancement of OSS use and creation in the military.[61]

Funding[edit]

Companies whose business center on the development of open-source software employ a variety of business models to solve the challenge of how to make money providing software that is by definition licensed free of charge. Each of these business strategies rests on the premise that users of open-source technologies are willing to purchase additional software features under proprietary licenses, or purchase other services or elements of value that complement the open-source software that is core to the business. This additional value can be, but not limited to, enterprise-grade features and up-time guarantees (often via a service-level agreement) to satisfy business or compliance requirements, performance and efficiency gains by features not yet available in the open source version, legal protection (e.g., indemnification from copyright or patent infringement), or professional support/training/consulting that are typical of proprietary software applications.

Comparisons with other software licensing/development models[edit]

Closed source / proprietary software[edit]

The debate over open source vs. closed source (alternatively called proprietary software) is sometimes heated.

The top four reasons (as provided by Open Source Business Conference survey[62]) individuals or organizations choose open source software are:

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  1. lower cost
  2. security
  3. no vendor 'lock in'
  4. better quality

Since innovative companies no longer rely heavily on software sales, proprietary software has become less of a necessity.[63] As such, things like open source content management system—or CMS—deployments are becoming more commonplace. In 2009,[64] the US White House switched its CMS system from a proprietary system to Drupal open source CMS. Further, companies like Novell (who traditionally sold software the old-fashioned way) continually debate the benefits of switching to open source availability, having already switched part of the product offering to open source code.[65] In this way, open source software provides solutions to unique or specific problems. As such, it is reported[66] that 98% of enterprise-level companies use open source software offerings in some capacity.

With this market shift, more critical systems are beginning to rely on open source offerings,[67] allowing greater funding (such as US Department of Homeland Security grants[67]) to help 'hunt for security bugs.' According to a pilot study of organizations adopting (or not adopting) OSS, the following factors of statistical significance were observed in the manager's beliefs: (a) attitudes toward outcomes, (b) the influences and behaviors of others, and (c) their ability to act.[68]

Proprietary source distributors have started to develop and contribute to the open source community due to the market share shift, doing so by the need to reinvent their models in order to remain competitive.[69]

Many advocates argue that open source software is inherently safer because any person can view, edit, and change code.[70] A study of the Linux source code has 0.17 bugs per 1000 lines of code while proprietary software generally scores 20–30 bugs per 1000 lines.[71]

Free software[edit]

According to the Free software movement's leader, Richard Stallman, the main difference is that by choosing one term over the other (i.e. either 'open source' or 'free software') one lets others know about what one's goals are: 'Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.'[32] Nevertheless, there is significant overlap between open source software and free software.[33]

The FSF[72] said that the term 'open source' fosters an ambiguity of a different kind such that it confuses the mere availability of the source with the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute it. On the other hand, the 'free software' term was criticized for the ambiguity of the word 'free' as 'available at no cost', which was seen as discouraging for business adoption,[73] and for the historical ambiguous usage of the term.[7][74][75]

Developers have used the alternative termsFree and Open Source Software (FOSS), or Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), consequently, to describe open source software that is also free software.[76] While the definition of open source software is very similar to the FSF's free software definition[77] it was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens with input from Eric S. Raymond and others.[78]

The term 'open source' was originally intended to be trademarkable; however, the term was deemed too descriptive, so no trademark exists.[79] The OSI would prefer that people treat open source as if it were a trademark, and use it only to describe software licensed under an OSI approved license.[80]

OSI Certified is a trademark licensed only to people who are distributing software licensed under a license listed on the Open Source Initiative's list.[81]

Open-source versus source-available[edit]

Although the OSI definition of 'open source software' is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as source-available, or as shared source, a term coined by Microsoft in 2001.[82] While in 2007 two of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative licenses were certified by the OSI, most licenses from the SSI program are still source-available only.[83]

Open-sourcing[edit]

Open-sourcing is the act of propagating the open source movement, most often referring to releasing previously proprietary software under an open source/free software license,[84] but it may also refer programming Open Source software or installing Open Source software.

Notable software packages, previously proprietary, which have been open sourced include:

  • Netscape Navigator, the code of which became the basis of the Mozilla and Mozilla Firefoxweb browsers
  • StarOffice, which became the base of the OpenOffice.orgoffice suite and LibreOffice
  • Global File System, was originally GPL'd, then made proprietary in 2001(?), but in 2004 was re-GPL'd.
  • SAP DB, which has become MaxDB, and is now distributed (and owned) by MySQL AB
  • InterBase database, which was open sourced by Borland in 2000 and presently exists as a commercial product and an open-source fork (Firebird)
Source

Before changing the license of software, distributors usually audit the source code for third party licensed code which they would have to remove or obtain permission for its relicense. Backdoors and other malware should also be removed as they may easily be discovered after release of the code.

Current applications and adoption[edit]

'We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable – one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could.'

Official statement of the United Space Alliance, which manages the computer systems for the International Space Station (ISS), regarding why they chose to switch from Windows to Debian GNU/Linux on the ISS[85][86]

Widely used open-source software[edit]

Open source software projects are built and maintained by a network of volunteer programmers and are widely used in free as well as commercial products.[37] Prime examples of open-source products are the Apache HTTP Server, the e-commerce platform osCommerce, internet browsers Mozilla Firefox and Chromium (the project where the vast majority of development of the freeware Google Chrome is done) and the full office suite LibreOffice. One of the most successful open-source products is the GNU/Linux operating system, an open-source Unix-like operating system, and its derivative Android, an operating system for mobile devices.[87][88] In some industries, open source software is the norm.[89]

Extensions for non-software use[edit]

While the term 'open source' applied originally only to the source code of software,[90] it is now being applied to many other areas[91] such as Open source ecology,[92] a movement to decentralize technologies so that any human can use them. However, it is often misapplied to other areas which have different and competing principles, which overlap only partially.

The same principles that underlie open source software can be found in many other ventures, such as open-source hardware, Wikipedia, and open-access publishing. Collectively, these principles are known as open source, open content, and open collaboration:[93] 'any system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants, who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which they make available to contributors and non-contributors alike.'[2]

This 'culture' or ideology takes the view that the principles apply more generally to facilitate concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial companies.[94]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^St. Laurent, Andrew M. (2008). Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing. O'Reilly Media. p. 4. ISBN9780596553951.
  2. ^ abLevine, Sheen S.; Prietula, Michael J. (30 December 2013). 'Open Collaboration for Innovation: Principles and Performance'. Organization Science. 25 (5): 1414–1433. arXiv:1406.7541. doi:10.1287/orsc.2013.0872. ISSN1047-7039.
  3. ^Rothwell, Richard (5 August 2008). 'Creating wealth with free software'. Free Software Magazine. Archived from the original on 8 September 2008. Retrieved 8 September 2008.
  4. ^'Standish Newsroom — Open Source' (Press release). Boston. 16 April 2008. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 8 September 2008.
  5. ^Gaudeul, Alexia (2007). 'Do Open Source Developers Respond to Competition? The LaTeX Case Study'. Review of Network Economics. 6 (2). doi:10.2202/1446-9022.1119. ISSN1446-9022.
  6. ^ abVM Brasseur (2018). Forge your Future with Open Source. Pragmatic Programmers. ISBN978-1-68050-301-2.
  7. ^ abcKarl Fogel (2016). 'Producing Open Source Software – How to Run a Successful Free Software Project'. O'Reilly Media. Retrieved 11 April 2016. But the problem went deeper than that. The word 'free' carried with it an inescapable moral connotation: if freedom was an end in itself, it didn't matter whether free software also happened to be better, or more profitable for certain businesses in certain circumstances. Those were merely pleasant side effects of a motive that was, at its root, neither technical nor mercantile, but moral. Furthermore, the 'free as in freedom' position forced a glaring inconsistency on corporations who wanted to support particular free programs in one aspect of their business, but continue marketing proprietary software in others.
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  12. ^Kelty, Christpher M. (2008). 'The Cultural Significance of free Software – Two Bits'(PDF). Duke University press – durham and london. p. 99. Prior to 1998, Free Software referred either to the Free Software Foundation (and the watchful, micromanaging eye of Stallman) or to one of thousands of different commercial, avocational, or university-research projects, processes, licenses, and ideologies that had a variety of names: sourceware, freeware, shareware, open software, public domain software, and so on. The term Open Source, by contrast, sought to encompass them all in one movement.
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Further reading[edit]

Open Source Software List

  • Androutsellis-Theotokis, Stephanos; Spinellis, Diomidis; Kechagia, Maria; Gousios, Georgios (2010). Open source software: A survey from 10,000 feet(PDF). Foundations and Trends in Technology, Information and Operations Management. 4. pp. 187–347. doi:10.1561/0200000026. ISBN978-1-60198-484-5.
  • Coleman, E. Gabriella. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton UP, 2012)
  • Fadi P. Deek; James A. M. McHugh (2008). Open Source: Technology and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-511-36775-5.
  • Chris DiBona and Sam Ockman and Mark Stone, ed. (1999). Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. O'Reilly. ISBN978-1-56592-582-3.
  • Joshua Gay, ed. (2002). Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston: GNU Press, Free Software Foundation. ISBN978-1-882114-98-6.
  • Benkler, Yochai (2002), 'Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm.' Yale Law Journal 112.3 (Dec 2002): p367(78) (in Adobe pdf format)
  • v. Engelhardt, Sebastian (2008). 'The Economic Properties of Software', Jena Economic Research Papers, Volume 2 (2008), Number 2008-045(PDF).
  • Lerner, J. & Tirole, J. (2002): 'Some simple economics on open source', Journal of Industrial Economics 50(2), p 197–234
  • Välimäki, Mikko (2005). The Rise of Open Source Licensing: A Challenge to the Use of Intellectual Property in the Software Industry(PDF). Turre Publishing. Archived from the original(PDF) on 4 March 2009.
  • Polley, Barry (11 December 2007). 'Open Source Discussion Paper – version 1.0'(PDF). New Zealand Ministry of Justice. Retrieved 12 December 2007.Cite journal requires journal= (help)
  • Rossi, M. A. (2006): Decoding the free/open source software puzzle: A survey of theoretical and empirical contributions, in J. Bitzer P. Schröder, eds, 'The Economics of Open Source Software Development', p 15–55.
  • Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution — an online book containing essays from prominent members of the open source community
  • Whence The Source: Untangling the Open Source/Free Software Debate, essay on the differences between free software and open source, by Thomas Scoville
  • Schrape, Jan-Felix (2017). 'Open Source Projects as Incubators of Innovation. From Niche Phenomenon to Integral Part of the Software Industry'(PDF). Stuttgart: Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies 2017-03.
  • Sustainable Open Source, a Confluence article providing guidelines for fair participation in the open source ecosystem, by Radovan Semancik

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Free software.
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Open Source
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Use the Source
  • The Open Source Initiative's definition of open source
  • Free / Open Source Research Community — Many online research papers about Open Source
  • Open-source software at Curlie

Open Source Display Software Mac

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