Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) | Estateplanning

Free and open source software (FOSS) is a type of software that gives users the right to use, share, modify, and distribute the software, providing the means to exercise those rights using the software's source code. With its roots in the hobbyist and academic public domain software ecosystem of the 1960s to 1980s, FOSS has evolved into a global movement, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones, and other devices. The FOSS community is driven by the 'Four Essential Freedoms' of The Free Software Definition and the criteria of The Open Source Definition, ensuring that all FOSS has publicly available source code. Today, FOSS is used by tech giants like [[google|Google]], [[microsoft|Microsoft]], and [[facebook|Facebook]], and is the backbone of popular operating systems like [[linux|Linux]] and [[bsd|BSD]]. With over 50 million lines of code contributed to FOSS projects in 2020 alone, the movement shows no signs of slowing down, with 75% of companies using FOSS in their operations. As [[richard-stallman|Richard Stallman]], the founder of the Free Software Foundation, once said, 'Free software is a matter of liberty, not price.'