Portal:Free and open-source software/Introduction

Free and open source software (in short, FOSS) is software that is distributed in a manner that allows its users to run the software for any purpose, to redistribute copies of, and to examine, study, and modify, the source code. FOSS is also a loosely associated movement of multiple organizations, foundations, communities and individuals who share basic philosophical perspectives and collaborate practically, but might diverge in detail questions.

Historical precursor is the hobbyist and academic public domain software ecosystem of the 1960s to 1980s. The FOSS movement's "free" part originates from Richard Matthew Stallman who noted the lost freedom to users on the decline of the public domain ecosystem and the grow of a copyright'ed proprietary software ecosystem. As response, he created as hack of the copyright system the GPL, a protective license, aiming for the creation of an complete and free UNIX — GNU. Shortly after the BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) brought an alternative FOSS approach on the table, the more public domain like permissive licenses and its ecosystem. Other noteworthy FOSS organizations from this time include the Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), Apache Foundation (Apache Server), GNOME with their own definitions: The Free Software Definition, Debian Free Software Guidelines, The Open Source Definition and more. On end of 1990s, in context of the dot-com bubble, the Open Source movement (with Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Tim O'Reilly and others) gave important impulses to FOSS with the achieved open sourcing of Netscape's browser as Firefox and Sun Microsystems' office suit as OpenOffice.org. The rise of Linus Torvalds' Linux as general purpose OS, paved the way for broad mainstream recognition and acceptance of FOSS in the IT domain and general public.

In the following years the FOSS movement gave inspiration on the creation of many related movements, like the Open hardware, Open content, Free culture, open standards and many more.