Other famous open source projects
Open source software is software that comes complete with source code and an open license. It allows end users to modify that source code if they wish. To be termed open source the software must be available for free and must allow end users to distribute applications written with the software without restriction.
Open source software is usually the result of a collaborative effort from developers around the globe. A project to address a particular problem is started and a general invitation is extended to volunteers who may want to help in the development of the solution. Projects are typically broken into small units and tasks and programmers with relevant experience are encouraged to take on development of specific units. Separate project teams are set up to handle testing and distribution of contributions.
The origins of the idea of open source software date back to at least 1983 when the GNU project was announced by Richard Stallman at MIT, leading to the launch of the GNU operating system the following year. This was a Unix-like operating system that provided users with the source code. It was issued under a license drafted by Stallman and called the General Public License (GPL), which still forms the preferred licensing model for the majority of open source software.
Stallman and his associates believed that proprietary software development was a hindrance to improvements in software products. The initiative became known informally as the free software movement. Some supporters of this movement had quite radical ideas, even branding proprietary software as a social evil. The radical approach of some of this group probably served to deter many more reasonable developers from pursuing their ideas. The DOS and Apple OS based PC revolution was also beginning to gather immense impetus and Unix-like systems took something of a back seat.
It was not long before freeware and shareware products began to find their way on to the market. As the name implies freeware products were free of charge. Shareware products were also free but usually required a fee if used for commercial purposes. Very few of these products were delivered with source code. While these products would not qualify today as open source, they certainly led the way to better open source projects.
1998 saw the formation of the Open Software Initiative (OSI), which led to some formalization of terms and a definition of what standards and licensing options were required to categorize software as open source. The OSI also set about convincing corporate entities of the value of open source and succeeded in convincing Netscape to release the source code for Navigator.
In 2000, Sun Microsystems released the source for its suite of Office programs, stating that they believed the global community would contribute to significantly faster product development times. The result is Openoffice which includes word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and database applications and can work seamlessly with Microsoft and other file formats.
Other famous open source projects are the GIMP, a full-featured image manipulation program, Mozilla Firefox for web browsing and Joomla for building and managing websites.