Software practice · 2007

The Open Source Definition

Open Source Initiative

Open Source Initiative · Version 1.9 · 22 March 2007

The ten criteria that the distribution terms of a software license must meet to be called open source.

Part of the series Free software and ways of working.

Poster of “The Open Source Definition”: the text in two columns
Shown in the ivorygenesis theme
Print from
A3
License
CC BY 4.0
Retrieved
27 September 2026
Language
English
Rights holder
Open Source Initiative

Theme

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US formats

Each one laid out on its own. At Letter and Tabloid the body of a long text prints under 8 pt: they suit short texts, or a copy to read up close.

Every Software practice poster, in the A, 50 × 70 and 60 × 80 cm formats and every theme, as one zip from the latest release, and in the US formats as another.

Print from A3: the smallest A size at which the body text is at least 8 pt.

Wallpaper

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Edition

The page of opensource.org, “Page created on July 7, 2006 | Last modified on February 16, 2024”, which holds version 1.9 of the definition, “last modified, 2007-03-22”. The title of the page is the title of the poster and the version and its date, from the end of the page, are also in the kicker; the dates of the page itself are left out. Links are set as plain text, the rule of the page before its closing lines is kept, and the closing lines stay in italics as on the page. Nothing else is left out.

Rights

The content on this website, of which Opensource.org is the author, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Footer of every page of https://opensource.org, including https://opensource.org/osd, linked to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Section 3(a) of CC BY 4.0 asks for the name of the creator, a notice that refers to the license with its URI, the URI of the material and an indication of any modification: the footer of the poster gives them. The page carries no copyright notice of its own.

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