The best free and open-source software
Open source software is any kind of program that anyone in the world can download, modify and distribute it without paying fees. This is because the developer has specifically chosen to release the source code for free under an open source license.
Since the open source movement took off as a software development philosophy at the end of the 1990s, it’s changed the world. Estimates even suggest that a mind-blowing 96% of all web servers globally are running on some form of open source Linux operating system, for example.
Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux and descendants of BSD are widely used today, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones, and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-source licenses are used by many software packages today.
Some of the famous names in coding might give you an idea of why C and C++ are among the top open-source programming languages. Programs built in C and C++ are particularly portable because programmers can use compilers for a wide variety of platforms. Both C and C++ are regarded as excellent programming languages.
Regardless of your vocation and level of expertise, open-source software can be a powerful tool for creating, collaborating and innovating.
- Mozilla Firefox. [Image source: Mozilla Firefox] …
- LibreOffice. [Image source: LibreOffice] …
- GIMP. [Image source: GIMP] …
- VLC Media Player. …
- Linux. …
- Blender. …
- GNU Compiler Collection. …
- Python.
The combination of the almost-finished GNU operating system and the Linux kernel made the first complete free software operating system. Among Linux distributions, Debian GNU/Linux, begun by Ian Murdock in 1993, is noteworthy for being explicitly committed to the GNU and FSF principles of free software.
but Google does develope some major open source projects. Android is open source and developed by Google. Chromium, the code behind Google Chrome and several other web browsers is open source and developed primarily by Google.
