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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

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

open-source open source

DeepSeek's systems are open-source, meaning their inner workings are public, allowing programmers to customise parts of the software to suit their needs.

From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2026

Shares of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices fell for the fourth consecutive day Monday as investors looked past the companies’ latest announcements around open-source artificial intelligence.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 12, 2026

In July, open-source research organisation Myanmar Witness revealed that they had analysed hundreds of missing-person advertisements collected from Facebook between 2021 and 2025.

From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2026

Artex is an open-source AI agent developed by Li Puhua, a Chinese cybersecurity engineer who uses the alias Autumn.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 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

Startups have flocked to open source models like DeepSeek.

From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2026

Shares are rapidly becoming the way to play AI growth, safety, and the proliferation of open source large language models.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

“The big labs appear to know they are at peak power and want to lock it down by coordinating to prevent competition from open source and startups.”

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 14, 2026

Cloudera’s Ricky said the partnership reinforced both companies’ commitment to open weights and open source.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 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

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