---
title: "Open source"
chunk: 4/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:49:44.361173+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Linux (that much of world's server parks are running)
MediaWiki (that Wikipedia is based upon)
Many more:
List of free and open-source software packages
List of formerly proprietary software
The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer.  GSoC is a large scale project with 202 participating organizations in 2021.  There are similar smaller scale projects such as the Talawa Project run by the Palisadoes Foundation (a non profit based in California, originally to  promote the use of information technology in Jamaica, but now also supporting underprivileged communities in the US)

=== Electronics ===

Open-source hardware is hardware which initial specification, usually in a software format, is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the hardware and source code without paying royalties or fees. Open-source hardware evolves through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual hardware/software developers, hobbyists, as well as very large companies. Examples of open-source hardware initiatives are:

Openmoko: a family of open-source mobile phones, including the hardware specification and the operating system.
OpenRISC: an open-source microprocessor family, with architecture specification licensed under GNU GPL and implementation under LGPL.
Sun Microsystems's OpenSPARC T1 Multicore processor. Sun has released it under GPL.
Arduino, a microcontroller platform for hobbyists, artists and designers.
Simputer, an open hardware handheld computer, designed in India for use in environments where computing devices such as personal computers are deemed inappropriate.
LEON: A family of open-source microprocessors distributed in a library with peripheral IP cores, open SPARC V8 specification, implementation available under GNU GPL.
Tinkerforge: A system of open-source stackable microcontroller building blocks. Allows control of motors and read out sensors with the programming languages C, C++, C#, Object Pascal, Java, PHP, Python and Ruby over a USB or Wifi connection on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. All of the hardware is licensed under CERN OHL (CERN Open Hardware License).
Open Compute Project: designs for computer data center including power supply, Intel motherboard, AMD motherboard, chassis, racks, battery cabinet, and aspects of electrical and mechanical design.

=== Food and beverages ===

Some publishers of open-access journals have argued that data from food science and gastronomy studies should be freely available to aid reproducibility. A number of people have published creative commons licensed recipe books.

Open-source colas – cola soft drinks, similar to Coca-Cola and Pepsi, whose recipe is open source and developed by volunteers. The taste is said to be comparable to that of the standard beverages. Most corporations producing beverages keep their formulas secret and unknown to the general public.
Free Beer (originally Vores Øl) – is an open-source beer created by students at the IT-University in Copenhagen together with Superflex, an artist collective, to illustrate how open-source concepts might be applied outside the digital world.

=== Digital content ===

Open-content projects organized by the Wikimedia Foundation – Sites such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary have embraced the open-content Creative Commons content licenses. These licenses were designed to adhere to principles similar to various open-source software development licenses. Many of these licenses ensure that content remains free for re-use, that source documents are made readily available to interested parties, and that changes to content are accepted easily back into the system. Important sites embracing open-source-like ideals are Project Gutenberg and Wikisource, both of which post many books on which the copyright has expired and are thus in the public domain, ensuring that anyone has free, unlimited access to that content.
Open ICEcat is an open catalog for the IT, CE and Lighting sectors with product data-sheets based on Open Content License agreement. The digital content are distributed in XML and URL formats.
SketchUp's 3D Warehouse is an open-source design community centered around the use of proprietary software that's distributed free of charge.
The University of Waterloo Stratford Campus invites students every year to use its three-storey Christie MicroTiles wall as a digital canvas for their creative work.

=== Medicine ===
Pharmaceuticals – There have been several proposals for open-source pharmaceutical development, which led to the establishment of the Tropical Disease Initiative and the Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria Consortium.
Genomics – The term "open-source genomics" refers to the combination of rapid release of sequence data (especially raw reads) and crowdsourced analyses from bioinformaticians around the world that characterized the analysis of the 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak.
OpenEMR – OpenEMR is an ONC-ATB Ambulatory EHR 2011-2012 certified electronic health records and medical practice management application. It features fully integrated electronic health, records, practice management, scheduling, electronic billing, and is the base for many EHR programs.

=== Science and engineering ===

Research – The Science Commons was created as an alternative to the expensive legal costs of sharing and reusing scientific works in journals etc.
Research – The Open Solar Outdoors Test Field (OSOTF) is a grid-connected photovoltaic test system, which continuously monitors the output of a number of photovoltaic modules and correlates their performance to a long list of highly accurate meteorological readings. The OSOTF is organized under open-source principles – All data and analysis is to be made freely available to the entire photovoltaic community and the general public.
Construction – WikiHouse is an open-source project for designing and building houses.
Energy research – The Open Energy Modelling Initiative promotes open-source models and open data in energy research and policy advice.

==== Robotics ====

An open-source robot is a robot whose blueprints, schematics, or source code are released under an open-source model.

=== Other ===