ABSTRACT
Executive summary: The phrase “open-source software” refers to applications where the software can be examined and also modified by almost anyone. The software usually requires licensing such as the GNU open-source license, but the software itself may be available for free, for a voluntary donation, or for a small support fee. The open-source business model is almost unique and there are few other products of any kind that are developed by such a random collection of individuals, who may even live on different continents. The open-source model has led to some very successful software packages including Google, Firefox, Android, Libre Office, Apache Open Office, and even the hypertext markup language (HTML), which was contributed by Tim Berners-Lee, the famous Internet pioneer.
