IPA IP 2020 Question 96
A question IPA Japan published in 令和2年度 10月 ITパスポート試験 公開問題 問96, translated into English. ITPEC is based on the same exams.
Which of the following is an appropriate description concerning OSS (Open Source Software)?
Explanation
Company employees take part in developing some products as their job — OSS is open to anyone's contributions, and companies are among the biggest contributors.
OSS is developed by volunteers, organisations and companies alike. Firms that build products or services on OSS pay staff to develop it: most changes to the Linux kernel, for example, come from engineers employed by IT companies. What makes software OSS is its licence, which, as the Open Source Initiative's definition requires, lets anyone use, modify and redistribute it.
Answer (a)
Why not others:
- •(b) — free redistribution is a condition of OSS, and that includes distributing compiled, executable programs; Linux distributions ship mostly binaries
- •(c) — there are many open source licences (GPL, MIT, Apache and others) with different conditions; they are approved by the Open Source Initiative, not defined by ISO
- •(d) — an OSS licence may not exclude any field of use, so business use is allowed, and companies run OSS widely
Key rule: OSS means a licence that allows free use, modification and redistribution by anyone for any purpose; who writes it, volunteers or company staff, does not matter.
Software · AI-written, may contain errors
This question comes from the past questions IPA Japan publishes, translated into English by ITPEC Practice. ITPEC Practice is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with IPA or ITPEC. See the original paper (PDF) or Report an issue.