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• open-source
  open-source

  adjective

  pertaining to or denoting software whose source code is available free of charge to the public to use, copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute.
• open source
  open source

open-source

American  

[oh-puhn-sawrs, -sohrs] / ˈoʊ pənˈsɔrs, -ˈsoʊrs /

adjective

1. Computers. pertaining to or denoting software whose source code is available free of charge to the public to use, copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute.

2. pertaining to or denoting a product or system whose origins, formula, design, etc., are freely accessible to the public.

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open source British  

noun

1. 1. intellectual property, esp computer source code, that is made freely available to the general public by its creators

   2. ( as modifier ) Compare closed source

      open source software

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open-source Scientific  

1. Relating to source code that is available to the public without charge. Open-source code is often enhanced, improved, and adapted for specific purposes by interested programmers, with the revised versions of the code are made available to the public. For example, most of the code in the Linux operating system is open-source.

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Etymology

Origin of open-source

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

open-source open source

“There is no reason for chip stocks to go down when open-source models come out,” he said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026

The FT, citing researchers at Israeli AI company Dream, said hackers had used open-source AI agents to build an autonomous tool to carry out the attack.

From Barron's ● Aug. 13, 2026

The move is also meant to position Meta as an American open-source alternative to rapidly advancing inexpensive Chinese AI models.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026

It has contributed extensively to the open-source universe, including launching hugely popular open-source projects called React and PyTorch.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026

At the moment, he had NT 5, NT 4, Work Station, Windows 98, and he and Eric had begun fooling around with Linux, the complex, open-source software system rapidly spreading across the world.

From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz

These were the most powerful models, not the ones being made open source - but as the technology develops, it has raised a serious question for Smith.

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

Decisions about whether these tools should be open source carry significant weight given their potential to do harm.

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

Rizzo expects what he calls an “80:20 world” wherein 80% of the AI tokens used by corporates are open weight or open source and 20% of them are frontier like Anthropic or OpenAI.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 12, 2026

He said Meta would also release a new class of open source models, designed to run on a laptop.

From Barron's ● Aug. 10, 2026

The open source movement has grown to more than eight million users, perhaps the geekiest social movement on the Net, since its members and passionate adherents are programmers and designers.

From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz