Open-source software advocacy is the practice of attempting to increase the awareness and improve the perception of

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

. In some cases, this may be in opposition to

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

concepts (e.g.

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

and

copyrights A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

as a whole). Leading open-source advocates include Brian Behlendorf, Tim O'Reilly, Eric Raymond,

Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel. He also created the distributed version control system Git. He was honored, along with Shinya Yam ...

Mitch Kapor Mitchell David Kapor ( ; born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur best known for his work as an application developer in the early days of the personal computer software industry, later founding Lotus Software, Lotus, where he was instr ...

, Jim Jagielski and Paul Vixie. Others that advocate the related

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

movement include Richard Stallman, Alan Cox, Jimmy Wales and Eben Moglen. Bruce Perens is a prominent figure who works to promote both terms. There are even broadcast and

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

radio shows whose sole subject is open source advocacy. Gutsy Geeks and Open Source (radio show) are but two examples.

See also

External links

Further reading