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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

  noun

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

Moonshot AI will release Kimi K3 as an open-source model on 27 July, making it the first of its scale that can be freely downloaded and customised by developers and members of the public.

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

Hugging Face is one of the world's largest open-source hubs for sharing AI models and is often used by tech developers and researchers.

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

The victim was Hugging Face, a provider of open-source AI tools; it discovered the break-in early last week.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026

Nancy Tengler, CEO of Laffer Tengler Investments, compared the market reaction to the selloff spurred by China’s open-source DeepSeek model last year that created “a tremendous opportunity” for investors who bought the dip.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 21, 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 Mythos episode "was a powerful moment" for seeing open source as an alternative, Mengad said.

From Barron's ● Jul. 9, 2026

“There’s really an embarrassment of riches right now coming out of the open source labs.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 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

Proton VPN’s apps are fully open source, allowing independent security verification, with the fourth annual no-logs audit completed by Securitum in August 2025.

From Salon ● Jun. 2, 2026

Slashdot is a center for the open source and free software movements.

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