MY ONE BLOGby Manishdai
Software Development

What is Open Source?

Quick answer

Software whose source code is publicly available under a license that lets anyone use, study, modify, and share it.

Open Source, explained

Open-source projects are developed in the open, often by communities of volunteers and companies collaborating on platforms like GitHub. Licenses define the rules. Permissive licenses such as MIT and Apache 2.0 allow broad reuse, including in proprietary products, while copyleft licenses such as the GPL require derivative works to remain open under the same terms.

Much of the modern technology stack is open source, including Linux, Kubernetes, Python, popular web frameworks, and many databases. Benefits include transparency, faster innovation, and avoiding vendor lock-in. Challenges include funding maintainers, security of widely used but under-resourced projects, and the rise of open-weight AI models, which share model weights but may not meet traditional open-source definitions.

Related terms

Git

A free, open-source distributed version control system that tracks changes to code and lets many developers collaborate safely.

Linux

A free, open-source operating system kernel, first released in 1991, that powers most servers, Android phones, and countless devices.

Open-Weight Model

An AI model whose trained parameters, or weights, are published so anyone can download, run, and adapt it, subject to its licence.

Semantic Versioning

A version numbering scheme in the form MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH that signals whether a software update adds features, fixes bugs, or breaks compatibility.

Software Bill of Materials

A detailed list, known as an SBOM, of all the components, libraries, and versions that make up a piece of software.

Supply Chain Attack

A cyberattack that compromises a trusted supplier, software vendor, or component in order to reach that supplier's customers.

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