Other benefits of using FOSS can include decreased software costs, increased security and stability (especially in regard to malware), protecting privacy, education, and giving users more control over their own hardware. This is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright licensing and the source code is usually hidden from the users.įOSS maintains the software user's civil liberty rights (see the Four Essential Freedoms, below).
A screenshot of free and open-source software (FOSS): Linux Mint running the Xfce desktop environment, Firefox, a calculator program, the built-in calendar, Vim, GIMP, and VLC media playerįree and open-source software ( FOSS) is software that is both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.
