Free and Open Source Software
In the most general sense, the term “Free and Open Source” is used to describe something where the user can view and modify the source code. But I believe it’s more than that.
I believe that open source is a community where people can help each other write better code. perfect code, in fact.
Perfection
In an open source environment, software trends to perfection. Take Wikipedia, for example. Wikipedia is the most largest, detailed source of information in existence, but it gets a lot of flack for being editable by anyone. This article isn’t meant to written in defense of Wikipedia, but I find it a great example.
What’s not Open Source
When NVIDIA decided to open source part of their driver, it caused a lot of commotion. Except, it wasn’t open source. Not to my definition, anyway. NVIDIA said they wouldn’t allow pull requests or changes to the code. While the codebase was online, free to view and copy, it didn’t foster the community associated with open source.