What is open source software?

It is not easy to define the term `open source software' with few words, due to the many categories and variants that exist. But it is not too complicated, either, since the idea in itself is simple. Therefore, before using stricter definitions, let us devote a moment to explain, in a relatively informal way, what do we understand as open source software⁷.

Footnotes

... software⁷

Here we are referring to `open source' software (or `free software') as a generic term, and not to the Open Source Definition [10], which is of course strict enough, as will be discussed later in this section.