- Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) are softwares where it is possible to see and change the software codes that make it work, but the community who developed it actually encourage it and rely on this philosophy to see the software spread and grow beyond its original creators.
- Because of the way it is licensed, it has the potential to be legally given away for free or for very little cost and copied and shared with others.
- In addition, it has far more scope for being available in multiple languages and for being adapted or tweaked to particular needs. This can be very useful for students, researchers, teachers, scientists wanting to use legal software that is appropriate to their needs and fits within their modest budgets.
- The nature of FOSS development practices means that some tools are extremely professional and even exceed the functionality of proprietary solutions. This is possible to see in applications such as Firefox for Web browsing, or Thunderbird for email.
- In computing, free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS (for Free/Libre/Open Source Software) is software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code.
- This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporate players.
- FOSS is generally synonymous with free software and open source software, and describes similar development models, but with differing cultures and philosophies.
- Free software licenses and Open source licenses are used by Many software packages. The licenses have important differences, which mirror the differences in the ways the two kinds of software can be used and distributed and reflect differences in the philosophy behind the two.
[Source: Wikipedia]
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