Product Code Database
Open source is the practice of publishing digital resources publicly alongside their source code or source files, enabling use, study, modification, and redistribution. It is historically and commonly associated with open-source software, software released with its source code. The concept has also been applied beyond software to other digital resources made available alongside their source files or design documents, such as open-source hardware, open-source educational resources or open-source fonts. The rights to reuse this type of digital resources are guaranteed through a specific legal framework, whether with open licenses or public domain dedication. The development of open source resources can be based on open collaboration, a decentralized and peer-to-peer model of production.
Open source resources are a shared component across openness movements — such as open-source software, open hardware, open education or open music — with each domain having distinct types of source files and distribution formats to manage. While the sharing of source code is an established practice with software, open resources in other fields may not systematically provide their source files, restricting the ability to modify these digital resources despite the rights granted to users.
The term open source can also refer to publicly available sources of information, notably in intelligence field with open-source intelligence (OSINT). By analogy to such practices of public access and collaboration, the notion is also used more loosely across many domains.
| + Source files and distribution formats examples ! Domain !! Source file !! Distribution format |
| .png, .jpg |
| .ttf, .otf, .woff |
| .stl, .gerber |
| executable |
| .mp3 |
In practice, open resources can regularly be provided only in their distribution format — a 2016 study of Thingiverse found that 84% of shared designs were in STL format, with source file formats being dramatically less common.
Different open licenses have been developed to address the specific legal and practical needs of different types of digital resources, as a license suitable for one domain may not be suitable for another. Creative Commons licenses are widely used for cultural work, including research articles, educational resources, and artistic works. In software, a common set of open licenses are those approved by the Open Source Initiative based on their Open Source Definition — it requires licenses to allow anyone to use the software for any purpose. For fonts, there is the SIL Open Font License which prohibits the standalone sale of font files; for hardware, there is the CERN Open Hardware Licence which extends coverage to patent rights alongside copyright; for data, there is the Open Database License which addresses specific database rights beyond copyright. These are illustrative examples of key licenses for each field; each domain encompasses a variety of open licenses offering different sets of rights and permissions.
By being free of copyright restriction, dedication of works to the public domain may enable everyone to freely use and modify a resource, with rights that can be expired or waived. However, copyright is a complex system with varying laws across jurisdictions, a public domain dedication may even be impossible in some places — therefore a work can be in the public domain in one country but not in another. The moral rights may be inalienable, such as in France, with the author or their heirs who may object to modifications impacting the integrity of a public domain work. The licence Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication provides a means to consistently guarantee the same rights worldwide, with a license fallback.
The system of open licenses like Creative Commons can be seen as problematic as private solutions relying on contract law, with a variety of actors calling for a copyright reform because commercial interests are seen to be protected at the expense of the public good. Creative Commons itself acknowledges that its licenses "are a patch, not a fix, for the problems of the copyright system".
Open-source book also extend this principle to books, where source files such as LaTeX or Markdown files are made publicly available alongside the final PDF.
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