Open-Source Software

Published Oct 14, 2022Updated May 15, 2024

Open-source software (OSS) is source code that, through licensing, is available for view, modification, and distribution. Although anyone can contribute to OSS, it is usually maintained by a community of volunteer software developers who collaborate on websites like GitHub.

OSS is also thought to be more trustworthy. Since all the code is publicly available, any unwanted, nefarious behavior or activity will be quickly exposed by the development community maintaining the project.

Examples

Some examples of OSS software (along with their license and release year) include the following:

Languages

Name	License	Release Year	Description
Go	BSD (3-clause, patent-grant)	2012	A compiled programming language that is C-like in syntax but includes features like garbage collection and structural typing.
PHP	PHP	1995	A general-purpose scripting language widely used as a server-side language for creating dynamic web pages.
R	GNU GPLv2	1993	A popular interpreted programming language used for statistical computing and graphics.
Ruby	Ruby	1995	A dynamic, general-purpose programming language commonly used for web development.

Other Software

Name	License	Release Year	Description
Angular	MIT	2016	A TypeScript-based framework used for building single-page applications.
Bootstrap	MIT (Apache 2.0 prior to v3.1.0)	2011	A CSS framework created to help style web pages with mobile-first considerations in mind.
Express.js	MIT	2010	A back-end Node.js framework used for building web applications and APIs, and providing network request functionality.
Font Awesome	Freemium/GPL friendly	2012	An icon toolkit for the web, based on CSS and Less.
Git	GPL-2.0-only	2005	A popular version control tool that developers use to collaborate, share, and save all relevant versions of their work to avoid it being lost.
jQuery	MIT	2006	A popular JavaScript (JS) library intended to simplify JavaScript programming.
Linux	GPLv2	1991	A family of Unix-like operating systems that are all based on the Linux kernel.
Next.js	MIT	2016	A React-based framework that brings client-side development to the server-side along with built-in features like TypeScript support and route pre-fetching.
Node.js	MIT	2009	A JS runtime environment for back-end development and building server-side or desktop applications.
NumPy	BSD	1995 (as Numeric); 2006 (as NumPy)	A popular Python library, used for complex mathematical operations and multi-dimensional arrays.
Ruby on Rails	MIT	2004	A server-side Ruby framework used for building web applications.
React	MIT	2013	A front-end library, written in JS, that is component-based and used for building web user interfaces.
React Native	MIT	2015	A mobile development framework that works across different operating systems like iOS and Android.
Vim	Vim	1991
Webpack	MIT	2014	A JS module bundler that can be run on the Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems.