Government Policy toward Open Source Software : An Overview

This chapter provides a brief overview of policy issues associated with open source software and offers an economic framework for thinking about these issues. It includes a thumbnail sketch of the main points made by each of the contributors, highlighting areas of agreement and conflict on key policy questions. This book examines the impact of government policy on open source software. “Open source” refers to access to the source code, written in a programming language, that constitutes a working software program. With open source software, users and others can read the code and change it to suit their needs. Several open source software programs and their relatives, free software programs, are widely used today. The best known is the computer operating system Linux. To date, Linux has been most successful as an operating system for servers—computers on a network used for tasks such as managing printers, storing files, and sending web pages to users—but could expand to the desktop (PC) market in the future. Other examples of widely embraced open source products include Sendmail (an email