What is open source? – Ethical Tech
flavoursofopenscience's bookmarks 2018-09-27
Summary:
Over the last few years, I’ve been a part of lots of discussions — across domains, from technology to journalism and education — about Silicon Valley and how technology business models are affecting other industries. Outside technology industry circles, there’s lots of talk about how open source software is a more respectful model.
What’s missing from many of these discussions is a thorough explanation of what open source software actually is, and why exactly it promises an alternative. In this post, I’ll talk about the history and mechanics of open source software, and then discuss some of these arguments.