What does Open Source (OS) Licensing mean?
The promoters of the open source movement decided it would be useful to clarify the underlying principles that would support the exchange between one software developer freely giving access to her source code and the circumstances under which another developer could make use of that code. By consensus, the open source promoters adopted an Open Source Definition which identified the principles which must be incorporated in any qualified OS license. Any computer programmer wishing to release software source code must use a form of OS license that has been approved by the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative. With this stamp of approval for an OS license, others in the open source community are willing to use and work on the released software.
