期刊名称：Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
印刷版ISSN：1931-6550
出版年度：2009
卷号：35
期号：2
出版社：American Society for Information Science and Technology
摘要：It is a privilege and an honor to be the guest editor for this special issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology on open source software. In it you will find a number of articles describing open source software and how it has been used in libraries. Open source software or free and open source software is defined and viewed in a variety of ways, and the definition will be refined and enriched by our authors. However, very briefly, for those readers unfamiliar with it, open source software is software that is distributed under one of a number of licensing arrangements that (1) require that the software’s source code be made available and accessible as part of the package and (2) permit the acquirer of the software to modify the code freely to fit their own needs provided that, (3) if they distribute the software modifications they create, they do so under an open source license. If these basic elements are met, there is no requirement that the resulting software be distributed at no cost or non-commercially, although much widely used open source software such as the web browser Firefox is also distributed without charge.
