- The licensing conditions are intended to facilitate continued reuse and wide availability of the software, in both commercial and non-commercial contexts.[1]
The JISC Briefing Paper notes that:
- In every other respect there is no difference between this and conventionally-licensed software. The key differentiator is the licence. The term 'open source' is reserved for licences which are certified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to meet the criteria of the Open Source Definition (OSD). (JISC, n.d.)
Open source on the Internet began when the Internet was just a message board, and progressed to more advanced presentation and sharing forms like a website. There are now many websites, organizations and businesses that promote open source sharing of everything from computer code to the mechanics of improving a product, technique or medical advancement. Being organized effectively as a consumers' cooperative, the idea of open source is to eliminate the access costs to the consumer and the creator by reducing the restrictions of copyright. It is intended that this will lead to creation of additional works, which build upon previous works and lead to greater social benefit. Additionally some proponents argue that open source also relieves society of the administration and enforcement costs of copyright. Organizations such as Creative Commons have websites where individuals can file for alternative 'licences', or levels of restriction, for their work (see Appendix One). These self-made protections free the general society of the costs of policing copyright infringement. Thus, on several fronts, there is an efficiency argument to be made on behalf of Open Sourced goods.[2]
These ideas have subsequently found their way into many spaces. From a higher educational perspective, they emerged, for example, in the concept of 'open access'. As Wikipedia notes, while the term 'open access' is applied to many concepts, it usually means the following:
- Open access (publishing), access to material (mainly scholarly publications) via the Internet in such a way that the material is free for all to read, and to use (or reuse) to various extents.
- Open access journal, journals that give open access to all or a sizable part of their articles.[3]
The relevant Wikipedia article notes that active debate over the economics and reliability of various ways of providing Open Access publishing of scholarly journals continues among researchers, academics, librarians, university administrators, funding agencies, government officials, commercial publishers and academic/professional society publishers. Notwithstanding this, an empirical
- ↑ List taken from www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/briefingpapers/2006/pub_ossbp.aspx.
- ↑ This section is adapted from the Wikipedia article on open source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source, as accessed on 18 January 2011. This text of this article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike Licence.
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access.
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