It would be a rare person who has not encountered the concept of open source software, if not actually used it in some context or another. Open source has become an important approach to software development and management today, but what is it? In simple terms, it is software developed under a licensing model that provides users that agree to the license associated with it various rights. Typically, those rights will include the freedom to use, copy or modify the source code with certain restrictions. Those restrictions may include an obligation to make any changes to the software available under the same terms as the original license, though this is not required by all open source licenses. Some licenses may restrict commercial use of…