LEXICON

∘ Commercial open source software (common short-hand: COSS) //

A category of companies or business units that commercializes open source technology. The existence of COSS depends on the existence of the corresponding open source technology but not vice versa. Often times, these businesses are founded or led by the core maintainers and committers of the open source technology from which they are built. (See different definitions of "Maintainer" and "Committer" below) Example: see the Commercial Open Source Software Index (COSSI), a list of COSS companies that have reached $100 million USD in annual revenue.

∘ Committer//

The individuals that work on an open source project are typically called committers. These people have write access to the project repositories and make the final decision on what is accepted into a project and how the project will evolve in the future in terms of new features, architectural changes.

∘ Contributor//

People using the technology created by an open source project often reach a point where they feel that a certain feature is lacking or something in the existing code should be changed to better accommodate their requirements. In such a case, a user of the project may become a contributor by making the necessary changes and creating a pull request in order to have these changes approved by a committer and merged into the project’s code base.

∘ Code of Conduct//

A set of community policies and norms articulated and applied as the basis to manage, moderate, and adjudicate the behaviors of and communications between members of an open source community. It is usually in the form of a public document in either the project’s code repository or website.

∘ Contribution license agreement//

A contribution license agreement (CLA) is a legal document signed by any developer who contributes intellectual property to an open source project. The CLA will typically specify the conditions under which developers can submit their contributions. Not all open source projects use a CLA for that purpose. In many cases, the terms and conditions applicable are already specified by the open source license that a project uses.

∘ Copyright//

The aspect of Intellectual property that gives creators the right to permit (or not permit) what happens to their creations, as opposed to trademark rights or moral rights.

∘ Contribution license agreement//

People using the technology created by an open source project often reach a point where they feel that a certain feature is lacking or something in the existing code should be changed to better accommodate their requirements. In such a case, a user of the project may become a contributor by making the necessary changes and creating a pull request in order to have these changes approved by a committer and merged into the project’s code base.

∘ Copyleft//

A form of licensing that makes a creative work freely available to be modified, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the creative work to be free as well. Open Access does not require works to be copyleft, nor does it necessarily exclude copyleft works from being open access. The recommended licence (CC-BY) for academic publishing is not copyleft.

∘ Desktop Publishing (DTP)//

The design of printed matter on a personal computer using graphical WhatYou-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) software such as Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. DTP software uses a graphical user interface to visually simulate the analog layout desks used in pre-digital times by graphic and editorial designers.

∘ GitHub//

A freemium web hosting service for user-run Git repositories. Git, an Open Source software application for collaborative editing over the internet, is described in our software catalogue.

∘ Hybrid Publishing//

Hybrid publishing, also known as multi-channel publishing, means the publishing of a single publication in several different print and electronic media, preferably with a workflow that minimizes the effort of customizing the publication for each medium.

∘ Linux//

A popular Open Source, Unix-compatible operating system. Linux is named after its creator Linus Torvalds, who still supervises its development by many developers worldwide. Most web servers today run Linux. Google’s Android operating system is also based on Linux. (Unix, originally developed in the early 1970, is also the foundation of other operating systems such as Mac OS X and iOS).

∘ Maintainer//

A developer whose main responsibility is to drive and manage the roadmap and development of an open source project by engaging in activities such as code review, roadmap, governance, and community and ecosystem building. It’s typically considered a community position with the most responsibility and power. It is also often used interchangeably with "Committer" (see below), because both roles have commit access to the project and can review and merge changes from a "Contributor" (see below).

∘ Multi-Vendor//

A term that describes when an open source project is developed and commercialized by more than one business entity.

∘ Open Core//

A business model, or subset of the COSS company category, where an open source project is the foundation (or “core”) from which a commercial product is built and copyrighted under a proprietary license (as opposed to an open source license). The proportion of open and proprietary in a product offering, depends on the particular use case, technology, and business value. (See below different definitions of "Project" and "Product". See this post for a more detailed discussion of “open core” implementation).

∘ Open Source//

Open Source originally refers to software that can be freely used, copied, adapted and modified. In order to allow modification, Open Source software provides users and developers not only with the installable software, but also its human-readable ‘source’ code. (An analogy would be a restaurant where customers can not only order dishes, but are also given the cooking recipes for unrestricted – personal as well as commercial – reuse.) The term has also been used to describe similar practices in 138 fields other than software development, such as design (Open Design), publishing (Open Access), engineering, and even medical research.

∘ Open source license//

Traditional proprietary software is sold by vendors under a commercial license. Open source software is made freely accessible under an open source license. There are a number of open source licenses available, the most popular being BSD, MIT, Apache, and GPL. Each license has different terms and conditions that impact how users can use the open source technology. All licenses are certified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and comply with the Open Source Definition.

∘ Open source foundation//

An open source foundation is a not-for-profit entity that hosts a number of different open source projects. The foundation typically provides the rules and policies for the governance of open source projects in its community. The value of a foundation is that it provides a vendor-neutral place for commercial companies to collaborate on open source.

∘ Open source software (common short-hand: OSS or FOSS--Free and Open Source Software)//

Software made generally available under a copyright license that meets the Open Source Definition, as defined by the Open Source Initiative.

∘ Platform//

A generic term to describe technology that serves as a foundation for other technology. For example, the internet is a platform for other network services, and operating systems are platforms for other software applications. (Platform-independent software can, theoretically, run on any computer).

∘ Product//

A commercially licensed product built on top of an open source project that are packaged, distributed, and sold to customers of the COSS entity that built this product. It is a discreet but related piece of technology to its open source project base. Benevolent Dictator For Life (common short-hand: BDFL): An open source community governance model where a single person, typically the creator of the project, makes most of the major decisions associated with the project.

∘ Program//

The terms program, software, application and app are often used more or less interchangeably. A program tells a computer or mobile device what to do. Programs are usually written in ‘high-level’ programming languages (such as C, C++, Java, Python) which are a mixture of English-language commands and mathematical-logical expressions. See also Software.

∘ Project//

At the heart of any open source community is the project. The project hosts all the artifacts that are being developed to solve issues related to a specific technology. Core to any open source project is the source code, but a project will also include documentation, test cases, build tools, etc.

∘ Protocol//

In computing and networking, a protocol is a technical standard according to which two systems communicate with each other. For example, the HTTP protocol defines the format for communication between web browsers and web servers. (Or, to use an ‘old media’ example: frequency modulation (FM) is the technical protocol for most radio transmissions).

∘ Public Domain Software//

Software made generally available with no copyright license conditions at all. Example: SQLite.

∘ Publisher//

A company whose purpose is to make the outputs of research publicly available.

∘ Repository (software)//

A collection of files managed with version control software (e.g., bzr, hg, git, csv, svn, etc.). Can be hosted by third-party (e.g., github, bitbucket, sourceforge), by an institution, or self-hosted locally.

∘ Single-Vendor//

A term that describes when an open source project is primarily developed and commercialized by a single business entity, commonly known as a vendor.

∘ Software//

Structured sets of instructions to be performed by a computer or handheld device. Software can be contrasted with hardware (the actual physical device), and also with data (the information processed by the software). The terms software, computer program, application and app are often used more or less interchangeably.

∘ Source available software//

Software made generally available in source code form under a copyright license that does not meet the Open Source Definition. This type of license is also called a limited source code license. Example: MongoDB under the Server Side Public License (SSPL), MariaDB under the Business Source License (BSL).

∘ Text editor//

Software for writing and editing plain text. Unlike word processors such as Microsoft Word, text editors do not combine text writing and text formatting within one software application. Many text editors provide more powerful text processing 141 functions than word processors, as well as specific assistance for writing in markup and programming languages.

∘ Unicode//

Unicode is today’s standard format for encoding plain text. Unlike its predecessor ASCII which is limited to the English alphabet, Unicode supports almost all writing systems. For example, classical texts of many historical written languages (such as Sanskrit) can be written in Unicode.

∘ Word processor//

Since the invention of personal computers, word processors have been among the most widely used computer software. Today’s word processors like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice/LibreOffice have in fact become hybrids between text editors and desktop publishing software. However, since they work according to the WYSIWYG paradigm, the use of word processor documents in markup-oriented hybrid publishing workflows is problematic.

∘ XML//

Acronym for Extensible Markup Language. XML is a markup language for constructing markup languages. In other words, it provides a syntax according to which specific markup languages can be built. An example of a markup language constructed with XML is XHTML. EPUB internally uses the XML-compliant ‘Open Packaging Format’ for cataloguing the different source files (text chapters, images etc.) used in an ebook.