1.1 OPEN SOURCE: HISTORY AND DEFINITION
The term “open source software” (OSS) refers to software whose source code (i.e. the software’s building block) is freely available and modifiable; it is generally developed by a geographically dispersedispersed community in a voluntary and distributed fashion (Lee and Cole, 2003; Raymond, 1999). Despite the relative novelty of the term “open source”, concepts such as free sharing, peer production, and software as a public good have been deeply rooted in software programming since its inception. At the origin of software development, sharing code was considered the norm, even among corporate laboratorylaboratories, since the hardware was perceived as valuable, while the software was considered a free resource to be openly shared among researchers (Stallman, 1985; Lerner and Tirole, 2002). In fact, long before OSS was introduced, another group was advocating for the free sharing of software code: the free/libre software movementFree/Libre Software Movement (FSM or FLOSS). In fact, long before OSS was introduced, The Free/Libre Software Movement (FSM)the FSM, led by Richard Stallman, emerged in the 60-80s1960s to the 1980s in response to the increased appearance of “proprietary software” and. It advocated for software that was free for everyone, asin the way it used to be in the early days of computers when hardware was considered the product, rather than software (Stallman, 1985; Ceruzzi, 2003).