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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

In it, Anthropic’s Mythos 5 ventured out on the internet and tried to trick two unidentified developers into adding malicious software to their open-source coding project.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026

Google announced a new feature allowing Google Earth users to generate AI visualizations on top of the service's satellite imagery, sparking concerns from researchers and open-source intelligence experts about the potential for disinformation.

From Barron's ● Jul. 31, 2026

GeoConfirmed, a volunteer-driven open-source intelligence project that verifies visuals from conflicts around the globe, also urged Google to reconsider.

From Barron's ● Jul. 31, 2026

He has since switched to free open-source AI models from China.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 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

The protest was co-hosted by the chief executive of Hugging Face, an AI company that provides open source tools.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026

“If you know about open source, you’d know that you can’t win by exclusion.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026

The Mythos episode "was a powerful moment" for seeing open source as an alternative, Mengad said.

From Barron's ● Jul. 9, 2026

In February 2024, he sued OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman, saying the firm he helped found had reneged on its non-profit, open source origins by hitching its wagon to Microsoft.

From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026

Most of the actionable intelligence the National Security Agency and CIA scoop comes from open source information.

From "Burning Blue" by Paul Griffin