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Stand-alone lists (also referred to as list articles) are articles composed of one or more embedded lists, or series of items formatted into a list. Many stand-alone lists identify their content's format in their titles, beginning with descriptors such as "list of", "timeline of", or similar.

In the interests of centralization of advice, this guideline page includes content guidelines, listed first; style guidelines particular to stand-alone lists, at § Style; and naming conventions, at § Titles.

Content policies

Being articles, stand-alone lists are subject to Wikipedia's content policies, such as verifiability, no original research, neutral point of view, and what Wikipedia is not, as well as the notability guidelines.

General formats of list articles

There are a number of formats, both generalized and specialized, that are currently used on Wikipedia, for list articles.

• Alphabetized lists, such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/List of mathematics articles (0–9) and Index of economics articles, as well as simple alphabetized lists without letter subheadings.
• Annotated lists, such as List of business theorists, and List of bicycle manufacturing companies.
• Chronological lists, such as Deaths in 2007 and List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction. (Lists whose titles begin with "timeline of" are always chronological.)
• Sortable lists, which are formatted as tables, such as List of social networking websites.
• Subheading-structured lists (i.e., categorized or hierarchical lists), such as List of cat breeds, Lists of mathematics topics and Lists of philosophers.

Specialized list articles

• Outlines, from the general (Outline of mathematics) to the somewhat specific (Outline of algebraic structures), are part of Wikipedia's Contents navigation system, and are indexed at Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines. A type of tree structure, they are hierarchies of subjects organized as a structured list including headings, subheadings, and list items (usually bulleted, and preferably annotated). For more information, see outline (list), and WikiProject Outlines.
• Indices, alphabetized lists of articles on a given subject, are part of Wikipedia's Contents navigation system, and are listed at Wikipedia:Contents/Indices. Examples include Index of psychology articles and Index of Syria-related articles. For more information, see index (publishing), and WikiProject Indexes.
• Timelines, using a standardized layout to present a chronological summary of a topic; examples include Timeline of architectural styles and Graphical timeline of the Big Bang. There is a special MediaWiki timeline syntax, but most Wikipedia timeline list articles do not presently use this recently introduced feature. For more information, see timeline.
• Order of battle – a representation of armed force components that shows the hierarchical organization and command structure.
• Lists of works include bibliographies and discographies. Bibliographies are a list of relevant references for a subject area, including books, journal articles, and web articles; discographies are a listing of all recordings on which a musician or singer features, or may be compiled based on genre or record label
• Glossaries, using one of several glossary formatting styles, are usually alphabetized lists of terms with annotations defining them in an encyclopedic way; examples include Glossary of philosophy and Glossary of pinball terms. The format can also be used for some other purposes. Non-encyclopedic glossary material may be migrated to Wiktionary (see § Lists of words for more information). For more information, see glossary, and WikiProject Glossaries.
• Set index articles – document a set of items that share the same (or a similar) name. They are different from disambiguation pages in that they are full-fledged articles meant to document multiple subjects, while disambiguation pages are for navigation purposes only. Not all set index articles are lists.

Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is both free software and open-source software^[a] where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.^[3] This is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright licensing and the source code is usually hidden from the users.

FOSS maintains the software user's civil liberty rights (see the Four Essential Freedoms, below). Other benefits of using FOSS can include decreased software costs, increased security and stability (especially in regard to malware), protecting privacy, education, and giving users more control over their own hardware. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux and descendants of BSD are widely utilized today, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones (e.g., Android), and other devices.^[4][5] Free-software licenses and open-source licenses are used by many software packages. The free software movement and the open-source software movement are online social movements behind widespread production and adoption of FOSS, with the former preferring to use the terms FLOSS or free/libre.

"Free and open-source software" (FOSS) is an umbrella term for software that is simultaneously considered both free software and open-source software. FOSS (free and open-source software) allows the user to inspect the source code and provides a high level of control of the software's functions compared to proprietary software. The term "free software" does not refer to the monetary cost of the software at all, but rather whether the license maintains the software user's civil liberties ("free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”).^[3] There are a number of related terms and abbreviations for free and open-source software (FOSS or F/OSS), or free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS or F/LOSS is preferred by FSF over FOSS, while free or free/libre is their preferred term).^[6]

Although there is almost a complete overlap between free-software licenses and open-source-software licenses, there is a strong philosophical disagreement between the advocates of these two positions. The terminology of FOSS or "Free and Open-source software" was created to be a neutral on these philosophical disagreements between the FSF and OSI and have a single unified term that could refer to both concepts.^[7]

Free software

Richard Stallman's Free Software Definition, adopted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), defines free software as a matter of liberty not price,^[8][9] and it upholds the Four Essential Freedoms. The earliest-known publication of the definition of his free-software idea was in the February 1986 edition^[10] of the FSF's now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin publication. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. As of August 2017, it is published in 40 languages.^[11]

Four essential freedoms of Free Software

To meet the definition of "free software", the FSF requires the software's licensing respect the civil liberties / human rights of what the FSF calls the software user's "Four Essential Freedoms".^[12]

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.^[12]

Open source

The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to determine whether a software license qualifies for the organization's insignia for open-source software. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens.^[13][14] Perens did not base his writing on the Four Essential Freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation, which were only later available on the web.^[15] Perens subsequently stated that he felt Eric Raymond's promotion of open-source unfairly overshadowed the Free Software Foundation's efforts and reaffirmed his support for free software.^[16] In the following 2000s, he spoke about open source again.^[17][18]

From the 1950s and on through the 1980s, it was common for computer users to have the source code for all programs they used, and the permission and ability to modify it for their own use. Software, including source code, was commonly shared by individuals who used computers, often as public domain software^[19] (Note that FOSS is not the same as public domain software, as public domain software does not contain copyrights^[20]). Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled software with hardware, free of charge.^[21]

By the late 1960s, the prevailing business model around software was changing. A growing and evolving software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products; rather than funding software development from hardware revenue, these new companies were selling software directly. Leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers who were able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive.^[22] While some software was still being provided without monetary cost and license restriction, there was a growing amount of software that was only at a monetary cost with restricted licensing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, some parts of the software industry began using technical measures (such as distributing only binary copies of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to use reverse engineering techniques to study and customize software they had paid for. In 1980, the copyright law was extended to computer programs in the United States^[23]—previously, computer programs could be considered ideas, procedures, methods, systems, and processes, which are not copyrightable.^[24][25]

Early on, closed-source software was uncommon until the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when IBM implemented in 1983 an "object code only" policy, no longer distributing source code.^[26][27][28]

In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU project, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users.^[29] Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto. The manifesto included significant explanation of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and "copyleft" ideas. The FSF takes the position that the fundamental issue Free software addresses is an ethical one—to ensure software users can exercise what it calls "The Four Essential Freedoms".^[3]

The Linux kernel, created by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. Initially, Linux was not released under either a Free software or an Open-source software license. However, with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License.^[30]

FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD) were released as Free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, was released under the Apache License 1.0.

In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and Free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as Free software. This code is today better known as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the FSF's Free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the Free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code. The new name they chose was "Open-source", and quickly Bruce Perens, publisher Tim O'Reilly, Linus Torvalds, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize open-source principles.^[31]

While the Open Source Initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by the concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code. A Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that "Open-source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business."^[32] This view perfectly summarizes the initial response to FOSS by some software corporations.^{[citation needed]} For many years FOSS played a niche role outside of the mainstream of private software development. However the success of FOSS Operating Systems such as Linux, BSD and the companies based on FOSS such as Red Hat, has changed the software industry's attitude and there has been a dramatic shift in the corporate philosophy concerning its development.^[33]

FOSS benefits over proprietary software

Personal control, customizability and freedom

Users of FOSS benefit from the Four Essential Freedoms to make unrestricted use of, and to study, copy, modify, and redistribute such software with or without modification. If they would like to change the functionality of software they can bring about changes to the code and, if they wish, distribute such modified versions of the software or often − depending on the software's decision making model and its other users − even push or request such changes to be made via updates to the original software.^{[34][35][36][37][38]}

Privacy and security

Manufacturers of proprietary, closed-source software are sometimes pressured to building in backdoors or other covert, undesired features into their software.^{[39][40][41][42]} Instead of having to trust software vendors, users of FOSS can inspect and verify the source code themselves and can put trust on a community of volunteers and users.^[38] As proprietary code is typically hidden from public view, only the vendors themselves and hackers may be aware of any vulnerabilities in them^[38] while FOSS involves as many people as possible for exposing bugs quickly.^[43][44]

Low costs or no costs

FOSS is often free of charge although donations are often encouraged. This also allows users to better test and compare software.^[38]

Quality, collaboration and efficiency

FOSS allows for better collaboration among various parties and individuals with the goal of developing the most efficient software for its users or use-cases while proprietary software is typically meant to generate profits. Furthermore, in many cases more organizations and individuals contribute to such projects than to proprietary software.^[38] It has been shown that technical superiority is typically the primary reason why companies choose open source software.^[38]

Drawbacks compared to proprietary software

Security and user-support

According to Linus's law the more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. However, this does not guarantee a high level of participation. Having a grouping of full-time professionals behind a commercial product can in some cases be superior to FOSS.^[38][43][45]

Furthermore, publicized source code might make it easier for hackers to find vulnerabilities in it and write exploits. This however assumes that such malicious hackers are more effective than white hat hackers which responsibly disclose or help fix the vulnerabilities, that no code leaks or exfiltrations occur and that reverse engineering of proprietary code is a hindrance of significance for malicious hackers.^[43]

Hardware and software compatibility

Sometimes, FOSS is not compatible with proprietary hardware or specific software. This is often due to manufacturers obstructing FOSS such as by not disclosing the interfaces or other specifications needed for members of the FOSS movement to write drivers for their hardware - for instance as they wish customers to run only their own proprietary software or as they might benefit from partnerships.^{[46][47][48][49][50][51][52]}

Bugs and missing features

While FOSS can be superior to proprietary equivalents in terms of software features and stability, in many cases FOSS has more unfixed bugs and missing features when compared to similar commercial software.^{[53][additional citation(s) needed]} This varies per case and usually depends on the level of interest and participation in a FOSS project. Furthermore, unlike with typical commercial software, missing features and bugfixes can be implemented by any party that has the relevant motivation, time and skill to do so.^{[45][additional citation(s) needed]}

Less guarantee of development

There is often less certainty of FOSS projects gaining the required resources and participation for continued development than commercial software backed by companies.^{[54][additional citation(s) needed]} However, companies also often abolish projects for being unprofitable, yet large companies may rely on, and hence co-develop, open source software.^[44] On the other hand, if the vendor of proprietary software ceases development, there are no alternatives; whereas with FOSS, any user who needs it still has the right, and the source-code, to continue to develop it themself, or pay a 3rd party to do so.

Missing applications

As the FOSS operating system distributions of Linux has a lower market share of end users there are also fewer applications available.^[55][56]

Adoption by governments

Country	Description
Brazil	In 2006, the Brazilian government has simultaneously encouraged the distribution of cheap computers running Linux throughout its poorer communities by subsidizing their purchase with tax breaks.[57]
Ecuador	In April 2008,[58] Ecuador passed a similar law, Decree 1014, designed to migrate the public sector to Libre Software.[59]
France	In March 2009, the French Gendarmerie Nationale announced it will totally switch to Ubuntu by 2015. The Gendarmerie began its transition to open source software in 2005 when it replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org across the entire organization.[60] In September 2012, the French Prime Minister laid down a set of action-oriented recommendations about using open-source in the French public administration.[61] These recommendations are published in a document based on the works of an inter-ministerial group of experts.[62] This document stops some orientations like establishing an actual convergence on open-source stubs, activating a network of expertise about converging stubs, improving the support of open-source software, contributing to selected stubs, following the big communities, spreading alternatives to the main commercial solutions, tracing the use of open-source and its effects, developing the culture of use of the open-source licenses in the developments of public information systems. One of the aim of this experts groups is also to establish lists of recommended open-source software to use in the French public administration.[63]
Germany	In the German City of Munich, conversion of 15,000 PCs and laptops from Microsoft Windows-based operating systems to a Debian-based Linux environment called LiMux spanned the ten years of 2003 to 2013. After successful completion of the project, more than 80% of all computers were running Linux.[64] On November 13, 2017 The Register reported that Munich was planning to revert to Windows 10 by 2020.[65] But in 2020, Munich decided to shift back from Microsoft to Linux again.[66]
India	The Government of Kerala, India, announced its official support for FOSS software in its State IT Policy of 2001,[67][discuss] which was formulated after the first-ever Free software conference in India, Freedom First!, held in July 2001 in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. In 2009, Government of Kerala started the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS).[68] In March 2015 the Indian government announced a policy on adoption of FOSS.[69][70]
Italy	The Italian military is transitioning to LibreOffice and the OpenDocument Format (ODF). LibreItalia Association announced on September 15, 2015 that the Ministry of Defence would over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations - making it Europe's second largest LibreOffice implementation.[71] By June 23, 2016, 6 thousand stations have been migrated.[72] E-learning military platform.[73][needs update]
Jordan	In January 2010, the Government of Jordan announced a partnership with Ingres Corporation (now named Actian), an open source database management company based in the United States, to promote open-source software use, starting with university systems in Jordan.[74]
Malaysia	Malaysia launched the "Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Program", saving millions on proprietary software licenses until 2008.[75][76]
Peru	In 2005 the Government of Peru voted to adopt open source across all its bodies.[77] The 2002 response to Microsoft's critique is available online. In the preamble to the bill, the Peruvian government stressed that the choice was made to ensure that key pillars of democracy were safeguarded: "The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law."[78]
Uganda	In September 2014, the Uganda National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U) announced a call for feedback on an Open Source Strategy & Policy[79] at a workshop in conjunction with the ICT Association of Uganda (ICTAU).
United States	In February 2009, the United States White House moved its website to Linux servers using Drupal for content management.[80] In August 2016, the United States government announced a new federal source code policy which mandates that at least 20% of custom source code developed by or for any agency of the federal government be released as open-source software (OSS).[81] In addition, the policy requires that all source code be shared between agencies. The public release is under a three-year pilot program and agencies are obliged to collect data on this pilot to gauge its performance. The overall policy aims to reduce duplication, avoid vendor 'lock-in', and stimulate collaborative development. A new website code.gov provides "an online collection of tools, best practices, and schemas to help agencies implement this policy", the policy announcement stated. It also provides the "primary discoverability portal for custom-developed software intended both for Government-wide reuse and for release as OSS".[81] As yet unspecified OSS licenses will be added to the code.[82]
Venezuela	In 2004, a law in Venezuela (Decree 3390) went into effect, mandating a two-year transition to open source in all public agencies. As of June 2009[update], the transition was still under way.[83][84][needs update]

Adoption by supranational unions and international organizations

In 2017, the European Commission stated that "EU institutions should become open source software users themselves, even more than they already are" and listed open source software as one of the nine key drivers of innovation, together with big data, mobility, cloud computing and the internet of things.^[87]

GPLv3 controversy

While copyright is the primary legal mechanism that FOSS authors use to ensure license compliance for their software, other mechanisms such as legislation, patents, and trademarks have implications as well. In response to legal issues with patents and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Free Software Foundation released version 3 of its GNU Public License (GNU GPLv3) in 2007 that explicitly addressed the DMCA and patent rights.

After the development of the GNU GPLv3 in 2007, the FSF (as the copyright holder of many pieces of the GNU system) updated many^{[citation needed]} of the GNU programs' licenses from GPLv2 to GPLv3. On the other hand, the adoption of the new GPL version was heavily discussed in the FOSS ecosystem,^[88] several projects decided against upgrading. For instance the Linux kernel,^[89][90] the BusyBox^[91][92] project, AdvFS,^[93] Blender,^[94] and the VLC media player decided against adopting the GPLv3.^[95]

Apple, a user of GCC and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its Xcode IDE from GCC to Clang, which is another FOSS compiler^[96] but is under a permissive license.^[97] LWN speculated that Apple was motivated partly by a desire to avoid GPLv3.^[96] The Samba project also switched to GPLv3, so Apple replaced Samba in their software suite by a closed-source, proprietary software alternative.^[98]

Skewed prioritization, ineffectiveness and egoism of developers

Leemhuis criticizes the prioritization of skilled developers who − instead of fixing issues in already popular open-source applications and desktop environments − create new, mostly redundant software to gain fame and fortune.^[99]

He also criticizes notebook manufacturers for optimizing their own products only privately or creating workarounds instead of helping fix the actual causes of the many issues with Linux on notebooks such as the unnecessary power consumption.^[99]

Commercial ownership of open-source software

Mergers have affected major open-source software. Sun Microsystems (Sun) acquired MySQL AB, owner of the popular open-source MySQL database, in 2008.^[100]

Oracle in turn purchased Sun in January 2010, acquiring their copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Thus, Oracle became the owner of both the most popular proprietary database and the most popular open-source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open-source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community.^[101] Partly in response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community forked the project into new database systems outside of Oracle's control. These include MariaDB, Percona, and Drizzle.^[102] All of these have distinct names; they are distinct projects and cannot use the trademarked name MySQL.^[103]

Legal cases

Oracle v. Google

In August 2010, Oracle sued Google, claiming that its use of Java in Android infringed on Oracle's copyrights and patents. In May 2012, the trial judge determined that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents and ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable. The jury found that Google infringed a small number of copied files, but the parties stipulated that Google would pay no damages.^[104] Oracle appealed to the Federal Circuit, and Google filed a cross-appeal on the literal copying claim.^[105]

By defying ownership regulations in the construction and use of information—a key area of contemporary growth—the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement counters neoliberalism and privatization in general.^[106][107]

By realizing the historical potential of an "economy of abundance" for the new digital world FOSS may lay down a plan for political resistance or show the way towards a potential transformation of capitalism.^[107]

According to Yochai Benkler, Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, free software is the most visible part of a new economy of commons-based peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. As examples, he cites a variety of FOSS projects, including both free software and open-source.^[108]

Sources

• =See also==
• Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates
• Wikipedia:Featured lists
• Wikipedia:Handling trivia
• Wikipedia:Listcruft
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Glossaries
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Road junction lists
• Wikipedia:Set index articles
• Wikipedia:Timeline standards
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists
• Help:List
• Help:Table
• Portal:Contents/Outlines

Appropriate topics for lists

The potential for creating lists is infinite. The number of possible lists is limited only by our collective imagination. To keep the system of lists useful, we must limit the size and scope of lists.

Lists that are too general or too broad in scope have little value, unless they are split into sections. For example, a list of brand names would be far too long to be of value. If you have an interest in listing brand names, try to limit the scope in some way (by product category, by country, by date, etc.). This is best done by sectioning the general page under categories. When entries in a category have grown enough to warrant a fresh list-article, they can be moved out to a new page, and be replaced by a See [[new list]] link. When all categories become links to lists, the page becomes a list repository or "List of lists" and the entries can be displayed as a bulleted list.

Lists that are too specific are also a problem. The "list of one-eyed horse thieves from Montana" will be of little interest to anyone other than the creator of the list.

Some Wikipedians feel that some topics are unsuitable by dint of the nature of the topic. Following the policy spelled out in What Wikipedia is not, they feel that some topics are trivial, non-encyclopedic, or not related to human knowledge. If you create a list like the "list of shades of colors of apple sauce", be prepared to explain why you feel this list contributes to the state of human knowledge.

Lists of people

Because the subject of many lists is broad, a person is typically included in a list of people only if both of the following requirements are met:

• The person meets the Wikipedia notability requirement.
• The person's membership in the list's group is established by reliable sources.

There are some common exceptions to the typical notability requirement:

• If the person is famous for a specific event, the notability requirement need not be met. If a person in a list does not have a Wikipedia article about them, a citation (or link to another article) must be provided to: a) establish their membership in the list's group; and b) establish their notability on either BLP1E or BIO1E.
• In a few cases, such as lists of people holding notable positions, the names of non-notable people may be included in a list that is largely made up of notable people, for the sake of completeness.

In other cases, editors choose even more stringent requirements, such as already having an article written (not just qualifying for one), or being notable specifically for reasons related to membership in this group. This is commonly used to control the size of lists that could otherwise run to thousands of people, such as the List of American film actresses.

For instance, articles about schools often include (or link to) a list of notable alumni/alumnae, but such lists are not intended to contain everyone who verifiably attended the school. (Wikipedia editors who would like to be identified as an alumnus/alumna should instead use the categories intended for this purpose, e.g. Category:Wikipedians by alma mater.) On the other hand, a list within an article of past school presidents, headmasters or headmistresses can contain the names of all the people who held this post, not just those who are independently notable.

Special care must be taken when adding living persons to lists based on religion or on sexual orientation. For further information, see Wikipedia's policy on biographical information about living people, in particular the category/list policy for living persons. There is an editnotice available for lists of people: {{Editnotice for lists of people}}.

Please document the list selection criteria on the talk page of the list.

Note that the guidance in this section is particularly applicable to people but applies to lists in general, not only lists of people.

Lists of subtaxa

Wikipedia articles on organisms, such as plants and animals (whether extant or extinct), can sometimes be dominated by long lists of subtaxa. When the article has not developed beyond stub quality, there is little added value to split-off a list of taxa, nor is there much value to split-off a list if the number of taxa is relatively short, such as below 30 items. Although 30 items in a vertical row can already extend beyond what is visible on the screen without scrolling, the visual impact of an included list can be reduced by creating several columns. Another method to create the overview of the taxa involved is by including one or several cladograms, provided phylogenetic sources are available. If the number of taxa is too large and would upset the balance of an article, it is best to create a new list that is linked to the main article. The elements of such a list should consist of all accepted taxa on the closest lower level (see the figure on the right hand side) and all elements in the list should be linked to articles on those subtaxa, whether these exist (blue links) or not (red links). The links should be checked by following them to avoid linking to disambiguation pages or synonyms, particularly when dealing with lists of genera.

Lists of companies and organizations

A company or organization may be included in a list of companies or organizations whether or not it meets the Wikipedia notability requirement, unless a given list specifically requires this. If the company or organization does not have an existing article in Wikipedia, a citation to an independent, reliable source should be provided to establish its membership in the list's group.

Lists of lists

Wikipedia has many articles that are primarily or entirely lists of other lists (see List of lists of lists). On lists of lists, nonexistent lists should not be included. That is, all the links in a "lists of lists" should be active (blue, not red).

Lists of lists should also be available as alphabetical categories. Put lists that have actual content in one of the subcategories under Category:Lists, and also include it in Category:Lists of lists. (See § Titles for naming conventions.)

See also Wikipedia:Lists of lists for an informal essay on content, purpose, naming etc. of lists of lists.

Lists of words

Glossaries – alphabetical, topical lists of terms, rather than of notable entities – are encyclopedic when the entries they provide are primarily informative explorations of the listed terminology, pertaining to a notable topic that already has its own main article on Wikipedia. A Featured example is Glossary of Texas A&M University terms. Stand-alone glossaries are categorized at Category:Wikipedia glossaries, as well as topically in article categories. Shorter ones are often better handled as embedded lists, though a redirect from a title like Glossary of X can be created to the section, and the redirect added to that category. Such embedded glossaries may split later into in stand-alone glossaries. (See WP:Summary style for information on when to split sections into child articles.) There are multiple ways of formatting glossaries. See § Titles for naming conventions.

Because Wikipedia is not a dictionary, many ideas for glossaries, in which entries would be little more than dictionary definitions ("dicdefs"), may be better suited to Wiktionary. Glossaries that do not meet Wikipedia's notability criteria or not-a-dictionary policy should be migrated to Wiktionary at wikt:Category:English glossaries. Wiktionary also freely forks Wikipedia's encyclopedic glossaries for redevelopment to Wiktionary's purposes and standards, in its Appendix: namespace.

Some other, non-glossary lists of words can also yield an encyclopedic page, such as List of English words containing Q not followed by U, the condition being that reliable secondary sources for the topic can be cited.

Selection criteria

Selection criteria (also known as inclusion criteria or membership criteria) should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources. In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed (for example, lists of unusual things or terrorist incidents), it is especially important that inclusion be based on reliable sources given with inline citations for each item.

When establishing membership criteria for a list, ask yourself if any of the following are true:

• If this person/thing/etc. weren't X, would it reduce their fame or significance?
• Would I expect to see this person or thing on a list of X?
• Is this person or thing a canonical example of some facet of X?

As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a directory, repository of links, or means of promotion, and should not contain indiscriminate lists, only certain types of lists should be exhaustive. Criteria for inclusion should factor in encyclopedic and topical relevance, not just verifiable existence. For example, all known species within a taxonomic family are relevant enough to include in a list of them, but List of Norwegian musicians would not be encyclopedically useful if it indiscriminately included every garage band mentioned in a local Norwegian newspaper. While notability is often a criterion for inclusion in overview lists of a broad subject, it may be too stringent for narrower lists; one of the functions of many lists on Wikipedia is providing an avenue for the retention of encyclopedic information that does not warrant separate articles, so common sense is required in establishing criteria for a list. Avoid red-linking list entries that are not likely to have their own article soon or ever.

Common selection criteria

Lists are commonly written to satisfy one of the following sets of criteria:

• Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia. Red-linked entries are acceptable if the entry is verifiably a member of the listed group and it is reasonable to expect an article could be forthcoming in the near future. Red-linked entries should be accompanied by citations sufficient to show that the entry is sufficiently notable for an article to be written on it (i.e., citations showing significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject). This standard prevents Wikipedia from becoming a collection of indiscriminate lists; prevents individual list articles from becoming targets for spam and promotion; and keeps individual lists to a size that is manageable for readers.
• Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria. These lists are created explicitly because most or all of the listed items do not warrant independent articles: for example, List of Dilbert characters or List of paracetamol brand names. Such lists are almost always better placed within the context of an article on their "parent" topic. Before creating a stand-alone list consider carefully whether such lists would be better placed within a parent article. (Note that this criterion is never used for living people.)
• Short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group. These should only be created if a complete list is reasonably short (less than 32K) and could be useful (e.g., for navigation) or interesting to readers. The inclusion of items must be supported by reliable sources. For example, Listed buildings in Rivington. If reliable sources indicate that a complete list would include the names of ten notable businesses and two non-notable businesses, then you are not required to omit the two non-notable businesses. However, if a complete list would include hundreds or thousands of entries, then you should use the notability standard to provide focus to the list.

"Creation guide" lists—lists devoted to a large number of redlinked (unwritten) articles, for the purpose of keeping track of which articles still need to be written—don't belong in the main namespace. Write these in your userspace, or in a Wikiproject's space, or list the missing articles at Wikipedia:Requested articles.

Citing sources

Stand-alone lists are subject to Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines for articles, including verifiability and citing sources. This means statements should be sourced where they appear, and they must provide inline citations if they contain any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations.

When an inline citation is not required by a sourcing policy and editors choose to name more sources than strictly required, then either general references or inline citations may be used. It is generally presumed that obviously appropriate material, such as the inclusion of Apple in the List of fruits, does not require an inline citation.

Manual of Style (MoS)
Content Accessibility Biography Disambiguation pages Organizing by subject Gender identity Hidden text Infoboxes Linking Self-references Words to watch
Formatting Abbreviations Capitalization Dates and numbers Pronunciation Spelling Text formatting Titles of works
Images Captions Image placement Icons Images
Layout Layout Lead section Tables Trivia sections
Lists Lists Lists of works Road junctions Stand-alone lists
By topic area Legal Legal Trademarks Arts Anime and manga Comics Blazons Film Lyrics and poetry Novels Philosophy Television Video games Visual arts Writing about fiction Music Music samples Record charts Stringed instruments History Military history Regional Specific naming conventions Canada China (and Chinese) Egypt France (and French) Hawaii India Indonesia Ireland Japan Korea Macedonia Malaysia Pakistan Philippines Poland Singapore Trinidad and Tobago Religion Islam Latter Day Saints Science Chemistry Computer science Mathematics Medicine Taxonomy Sports Cue sports (Snooker) Figure skating (Terminology)
Related guidelines Article size Article titles Categories, lists, and navigation templates Categorization Citing sources Hatnotes Notability Signatures Subpages Talk page guidelines Template namespace Understandability User pages Wikimedia sister projects WikiProjects
Overview Contents Tips

This section presents some particular style and layout considerations specifically for stand-alone lists, in addition to the general WP:Manual of Style/Lists, which pertains to all lists on Wikipedia.

Lead

A stand-alone list should begin with a lead section that summarizes its content, provides any necessary background information, gives encyclopedic context, links to other relevant articles, and makes direct statements about the criteria by which members of the list were selected, unless inclusion criteria are unambiguously clear from the article title. This introductory material is especially important for lists that feature little or no other non-list prose in their article body. Even when the selection criteria might seem obvious to some, an explicit standard is often helpful to both readers, to understand the scope, and other editors, to reduce the tendency to include trivial or off-topic entries. The lead section can also be used to explain the structure of embedded lists in the article body when no better location suggests itself.

Chronological ordering

Chronological lists, including all timelines and lists of works, should be in earliest-to-latest chronological order. Special cases which specifically require frequent daily additions, such as Deaths in 2024, may use reverse chronological order for temporary convenience, although these articles should revert to non-reverse order when the article has stabilized, as is the case with Deaths in 2003.

Categories, lists and navigation templates

As useful as lists are, certain lists may get out of date quickly; for these types of subjects, a category may be a more appropriate method of organization. See Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates for more information on the appropriate times to use lists versus categories.

Taxonomic links

For many genera there may be a considerable number of species. For the smaller genera a taxobox may suffice but for the more speciose including genera such as Anopheles it is probably better to move these into their own page. The bulk of the page will be taken up by the list. Such lists do qualify as encyclopedic: for many of these genera there are specialized monographs to assist in the identification of these species.

Bulleted and numbered lists

• Do not use lists if a passage is read easily as plain paragraphs.
• Use proper wikimarkup- or template-based list code (see WP:Manual of Style/Lists and Help:List).
• Do not leave blank lines between items in a bulleted or numbered list unless there is a reason to do so, since this causes the Wiki software to interpret each item as beginning a new list.
• Use numbers rather than bullets only if:
  • a need to refer to the elements by number may arise;
  • the sequence of the items is critical; or
  • the numbering has some independent meaning, for example in a listing of musical tracks.
• Use the same grammatical form for all elements in a list, and do not mix sentences and sentence fragments as elements.
  • When the elements are complete sentences, each one is formatted with sentence case (i.e., the initial letter is capitalized) and a final period.
  • When the elements are sentence fragments, the list is typically introduced by a lead fragment ending with a colon. When these elements are titles of works, they retain the original capitalization of the titles. Other elements are formatted consistently in either sentence case or lower case. Each element should end with a semicolon, with a period instead for the last element. Alternatively (especially when the elements are short), no final punctuation is used at all.

Article titles
All naming conventions
Category:Wikipedia naming conventions
Nature
Fauna (animals) Flora (plants)
Arts Entertainment Media
Books Broadcasting Comics Films Manuscripts Music Operas Television Video games Visual arts
People
Clergy Ethnicities and tribes Ancient Romans Royalty and nobility Sports Baseball players
Science Technology Transport
Astronomy Chemistry Medicine Programming languages Aircraft Ships
Government Politics Law
Government and legislation Legal Political parties
Organizations
Companies Latter Day Saints Sports teams
Numbers Dates
Numbers and dates
Places Events
Places Events
Lists Categories
Categories Lists Long lists Stub sorting
Language/country-specific
Writing systems All languages All countries Armenian Bangladesh Burmese Chinese German Greek Hebrew Indic Irish Japanese Korean Macedonian Mongolian New Zealand Old Norse Polish Russian Tibetan Ukrainian
Formatting
Capitalization Use English Definite or indefinite article at beginning of name Plurals Acronyms Technical restrictions

A common practice is to entitle list articles as List of ___ (for example List of Xs). If (as is often the case), the list has multiple columns and so is in layout table form, the name or title List of Xs is still preferable to Table of Xs or Comparison of Xs (though the latter may be appropriate for articles that are actual tables of data comparing numerous features, e.g. Comparison of Linux distributions).

A list of lists of X could be at either Lists of X or at List of X: e.g., Lists of books, List of sovereign states; the plural form is more prevalent.

The title is not expected to contain a complete description of the list's subject. Many lists are not intended to contain every possible member, but this does not need to be explained in the title itself. For example, the correct choice is List of people from the Isle of Wight, not List of people who were born on or strongly associated with the Isle of Wight and about whom Wikipedia has an article. Instead, the detailed criteria for inclusion should be described in the lead, and a reasonably concise title should be chosen for the list. Best practice is to avoid words like notable, famous, noted, prominent, etc. in the title of a list article. Similarly, avoid titles like List of all Xs.

• People: People by nationality are either List of Finns or Lists of French people, preferring List of ___ people. United States folk are a special case: List of United States people redirects to Lists of Americans which contains, amongst other things, lists by US state. (Special treatment is necessary because American is ambiguous.) Note, however, that lists of people organized by individual city should be at List of people from [city], rather than List of [city] people. In all relevant lists, people is far preferred to alternatives such as persons or individuals.
• Language: Poets and authors listed by language are at, for example List of German-language poets (see List of poets for the list-of-lists of them).
• Fiction and real life: List of fictional dogs is a list of fictional creatures, whereas List of individual dogs is a list with real-life examples. Note that the lead section of each list explains what criterion or criteria that list's entries meet.

Set index articles do not need to be titled with list of unless there is also another article or a disambiguation page using that title. For example, Dodge Charger is a list of cars named Dodge Charger, but does not need to be titled List of cars named Dodge Charger. However, since Signal Mountain is a disambiguation page, the related set index article is at List of peaks named Signal Mountain.

Three other special lists types have their own naming patterns. Glossaries are usually titled Glossary of X or Glossary of X terms, though if they contain substantial non-list prose about the nature or history of terminology relating to the topic, as well as a glossary list, a title such as X terminology may be more appropriate. Timelines are named in the form Timeline of X or Graphical timeline of X. Outlines are named Outline of X or Outline of Xs.

A very useful Wikipedia feature is to use the "Related changes" link when on a list page. This will show you all the changes made to the links contained in the list. If the page has a link to itself, this feature will also show you the changes made to the list itself.

Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is both free software and open-source software^[a] where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.^[3] This is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright licensing and the source code is usually hidden from the users.

FOSS maintains the software user's civil liberty rights (see the Four Essential Freedoms, below). Other benefits of using FOSS can include decreased software costs, increased security and stability (especially in regard to malware), protecting privacy, education, and giving users more control over their own hardware. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux and descendants of BSD are widely utilized today, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones (e.g., Android), and other devices.^[4][5] Free-software licenses and open-source licenses are used by many software packages. The free software movement and the open-source software movement are online social movements behind widespread production and adoption of FOSS, with the former preferring to use the terms FLOSS or free/libre.

"Free and open-source software" (FOSS) is an umbrella term for software that is simultaneously considered both free software and open-source software. FOSS (free and open-source software) allows the user to inspect the source code and provides a high level of control of the software's functions compared to proprietary software. The term "free software" does not refer to the monetary cost of the software at all, but rather whether the license maintains the software user's civil liberties ("free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”).^[3] There are a number of related terms and abbreviations for free and open-source software (FOSS or F/OSS), or free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS or F/LOSS is preferred by FSF over FOSS, while free or free/libre is their preferred term).^[6]

Although there is almost a complete overlap between free-software licenses and open-source-software licenses, there is a strong philosophical disagreement between the advocates of these two positions. The terminology of FOSS or "Free and Open-source software" was created to be a neutral on these philosophical disagreements between the FSF and OSI and have a single unified term that could refer to both concepts.^[7]

Free software

Richard Stallman's Free Software Definition, adopted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), defines free software as a matter of liberty not price,^[8][9] and it upholds the Four Essential Freedoms. The earliest-known publication of the definition of his free-software idea was in the February 1986 edition^[10] of the FSF's now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin publication. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. As of August 2017, it is published in 40 languages.^[11]

Four essential freedoms of Free Software

To meet the definition of "free software", the FSF requires the software's licensing respect the civil liberties / human rights of what the FSF calls the software user's "Four Essential Freedoms".^[12]

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.^[12]

Open source

The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to determine whether a software license qualifies for the organization's insignia for open-source software. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens.^[13][14] Perens did not base his writing on the Four Essential Freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation, which were only later available on the web.^[15] Perens subsequently stated that he felt Eric Raymond's promotion of open-source unfairly overshadowed the Free Software Foundation's efforts and reaffirmed his support for free software.^[16] In the following 2000s, he spoke about open source again.^[17][18]

From the 1950s and on through the 1980s, it was common for computer users to have the source code for all programs they used, and the permission and ability to modify it for their own use. Software, including source code, was commonly shared by individuals who used computers, often as public domain software^[19] (Note that FOSS is not the same as public domain software, as public domain software does not contain copyrights^[20]). Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled software with hardware, free of charge.^[21]

By the late 1960s, the prevailing business model around software was changing. A growing and evolving software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products; rather than funding software development from hardware revenue, these new companies were selling software directly. Leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers who were able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive.^[22] While some software was still being provided without monetary cost and license restriction, there was a growing amount of software that was only at a monetary cost with restricted licensing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, some parts of the software industry began using technical measures (such as distributing only binary copies of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to use reverse engineering techniques to study and customize software they had paid for. In 1980, the copyright law was extended to computer programs in the United States^[23]—previously, computer programs could be considered ideas, procedures, methods, systems, and processes, which are not copyrightable.^[24][25]

Early on, closed-source software was uncommon until the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when IBM implemented in 1983 an "object code only" policy, no longer distributing source code.^[26][27][28]

In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU project, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users.^[29] Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto. The manifesto included significant explanation of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and "copyleft" ideas. The FSF takes the position that the fundamental issue Free software addresses is an ethical one—to ensure software users can exercise what it calls "The Four Essential Freedoms".^[3]

The Linux kernel, created by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. Initially, Linux was not released under either a Free software or an Open-source software license. However, with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License.^[30]

FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD) were released as Free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, was released under the Apache License 1.0.

In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and Free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as Free software. This code is today better known as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the FSF's Free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the Free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code. The new name they chose was "Open-source", and quickly Bruce Perens, publisher Tim O'Reilly, Linus Torvalds, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize open-source principles.^[31]

While the Open Source Initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by the concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code. A Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that "Open-source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business."^[32] This view perfectly summarizes the initial response to FOSS by some software corporations.^{[citation needed]} For many years FOSS played a niche role outside of the mainstream of private software development. However the success of FOSS Operating Systems such as Linux, BSD and the companies based on FOSS such as Red Hat, has changed the software industry's attitude and there has been a dramatic shift in the corporate philosophy concerning its development.^[33]

FOSS benefits over proprietary software

Personal control, customizability and freedom

Users of FOSS benefit from the Four Essential Freedoms to make unrestricted use of, and to study, copy, modify, and redistribute such software with or without modification. If they would like to change the functionality of software they can bring about changes to the code and, if they wish, distribute such modified versions of the software or often − depending on the software's decision making model and its other users − even push or request such changes to be made via updates to the original software.^{[34][35][36][37][38]}

Privacy and security

Manufacturers of proprietary, closed-source software are sometimes pressured to building in backdoors or other covert, undesired features into their software.^{[39][40][41][42]} Instead of having to trust software vendors, users of FOSS can inspect and verify the source code themselves and can put trust on a community of volunteers and users.^[38] As proprietary code is typically hidden from public view, only the vendors themselves and hackers may be aware of any vulnerabilities in them^[38] while FOSS involves as many people as possible for exposing bugs quickly.^[43][44]

Low costs or no costs

FOSS is often free of charge although donations are often encouraged. This also allows users to better test and compare software.^[38]

Quality, collaboration and efficiency

FOSS allows for better collaboration among various parties and individuals with the goal of developing the most efficient software for its users or use-cases while proprietary software is typically meant to generate profits. Furthermore, in many cases more organizations and individuals contribute to such projects than to proprietary software.^[38] It has been shown that technical superiority is typically the primary reason why companies choose open source software.^[38]

Drawbacks compared to proprietary software

Security and user-support

According to Linus's law the more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. However, this does not guarantee a high level of participation. Having a grouping of full-time professionals behind a commercial product can in some cases be superior to FOSS.^[38][43][45]

Furthermore, publicized source code might make it easier for hackers to find vulnerabilities in it and write exploits. This however assumes that such malicious hackers are more effective than white hat hackers which responsibly disclose or help fix the vulnerabilities, that no code leaks or exfiltrations occur and that reverse engineering of proprietary code is a hindrance of significance for malicious hackers.^[43]

Hardware and software compatibility

Sometimes, FOSS is not compatible with proprietary hardware or specific software. This is often due to manufacturers obstructing FOSS such as by not disclosing the interfaces or other specifications needed for members of the FOSS movement to write drivers for their hardware - for instance as they wish customers to run only their own proprietary software or as they might benefit from partnerships.^{[46][47][48][49][50][51][52]}

Bugs and missing features

While FOSS can be superior to proprietary equivalents in terms of software features and stability, in many cases FOSS has more unfixed bugs and missing features when compared to similar commercial software.^{[53][additional citation(s) needed]} This varies per case and usually depends on the level of interest and participation in a FOSS project. Furthermore, unlike with typical commercial software, missing features and bugfixes can be implemented by any party that has the relevant motivation, time and skill to do so.^{[45][additional citation(s) needed]}

Less guarantee of development

There is often less certainty of FOSS projects gaining the required resources and participation for continued development than commercial software backed by companies.^{[54][additional citation(s) needed]} However, companies also often abolish projects for being unprofitable, yet large companies may rely on, and hence co-develop, open source software.^[44] On the other hand, if the vendor of proprietary software ceases development, there are no alternatives; whereas with FOSS, any user who needs it still has the right, and the source-code, to continue to develop it themself, or pay a 3rd party to do so.

Missing applications

As the FOSS operating system distributions of Linux has a lower market share of end users there are also fewer applications available.^[55][56]

Adoption by governments

Country	Description
Brazil	In 2006, the Brazilian government has simultaneously encouraged the distribution of cheap computers running Linux throughout its poorer communities by subsidizing their purchase with tax breaks.[57]
Ecuador	In April 2008,[58] Ecuador passed a similar law, Decree 1014, designed to migrate the public sector to Libre Software.[59]
France	In March 2009, the French Gendarmerie Nationale announced it will totally switch to Ubuntu by 2015. The Gendarmerie began its transition to open source software in 2005 when it replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org across the entire organization.[60] In September 2012, the French Prime Minister laid down a set of action-oriented recommendations about using open-source in the French public administration.[61] These recommendations are published in a document based on the works of an inter-ministerial group of experts.[62] This document stops some orientations like establishing an actual convergence on open-source stubs, activating a network of expertise about converging stubs, improving the support of open-source software, contributing to selected stubs, following the big communities, spreading alternatives to the main commercial solutions, tracing the use of open-source and its effects, developing the culture of use of the open-source licenses in the developments of public information systems. One of the aim of this experts groups is also to establish lists of recommended open-source software to use in the French public administration.[63]
Germany	In the German City of Munich, conversion of 15,000 PCs and laptops from Microsoft Windows-based operating systems to a Debian-based Linux environment called LiMux spanned the ten years of 2003 to 2013. After successful completion of the project, more than 80% of all computers were running Linux.[64] On November 13, 2017 The Register reported that Munich was planning to revert to Windows 10 by 2020.[65] But in 2020, Munich decided to shift back from Microsoft to Linux again.[66]
India	The Government of Kerala, India, announced its official support for FOSS software in its State IT Policy of 2001,[67][discuss] which was formulated after the first-ever Free software conference in India, Freedom First!, held in July 2001 in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. In 2009, Government of Kerala started the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS).[68] In March 2015 the Indian government announced a policy on adoption of FOSS.[69][70]
Italy	The Italian military is transitioning to LibreOffice and the OpenDocument Format (ODF). LibreItalia Association announced on September 15, 2015 that the Ministry of Defence would over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations - making it Europe's second largest LibreOffice implementation.[71] By June 23, 2016, 6 thousand stations have been migrated.[72] E-learning military platform.[73][needs update]
Jordan	In January 2010, the Government of Jordan announced a partnership with Ingres Corporation (now named Actian), an open source database management company based in the United States, to promote open-source software use, starting with university systems in Jordan.[74]
Malaysia	Malaysia launched the "Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Program", saving millions on proprietary software licenses until 2008.[75][76]
Peru	In 2005 the Government of Peru voted to adopt open source across all its bodies.[77] The 2002 response to Microsoft's critique is available online. In the preamble to the bill, the Peruvian government stressed that the choice was made to ensure that key pillars of democracy were safeguarded: "The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law."[78]
Uganda	In September 2014, the Uganda National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U) announced a call for feedback on an Open Source Strategy & Policy[79] at a workshop in conjunction with the ICT Association of Uganda (ICTAU).
United States	In February 2009, the United States White House moved its website to Linux servers using Drupal for content management.[80] In August 2016, the United States government announced a new federal source code policy which mandates that at least 20% of custom source code developed by or for any agency of the federal government be released as open-source software (OSS).[81] In addition, the policy requires that all source code be shared between agencies. The public release is under a three-year pilot program and agencies are obliged to collect data on this pilot to gauge its performance. The overall policy aims to reduce duplication, avoid vendor 'lock-in', and stimulate collaborative development. A new website code.gov provides "an online collection of tools, best practices, and schemas to help agencies implement this policy", the policy announcement stated. It also provides the "primary discoverability portal for custom-developed software intended both for Government-wide reuse and for release as OSS".[81] As yet unspecified OSS licenses will be added to the code.[82]
Venezuela	In 2004, a law in Venezuela (Decree 3390) went into effect, mandating a two-year transition to open source in all public agencies. As of June 2009[update], the transition was still under way.[83][84][needs update]

Adoption by supranational unions and international organizations

In 2017, the European Commission stated that "EU institutions should become open source software users themselves, even more than they already are" and listed open source software as one of the nine key drivers of innovation, together with big data, mobility, cloud computing and the internet of things.^[87]

GPLv3 controversy

While copyright is the primary legal mechanism that FOSS authors use to ensure license compliance for their software, other mechanisms such as legislation, patents, and trademarks have implications as well. In response to legal issues with patents and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Free Software Foundation released version 3 of its GNU Public License (GNU GPLv3) in 2007 that explicitly addressed the DMCA and patent rights.

After the development of the GNU GPLv3 in 2007, the FSF (as the copyright holder of many pieces of the GNU system) updated many^{[citation needed]} of the GNU programs' licenses from GPLv2 to GPLv3. On the other hand, the adoption of the new GPL version was heavily discussed in the FOSS ecosystem,^[88] several projects decided against upgrading. For instance the Linux kernel,^[89][90] the BusyBox^[91][92] project, AdvFS,^[93] Blender,^[94] and the VLC media player decided against adopting the GPLv3.^[95]

Apple, a user of GCC and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its Xcode IDE from GCC to Clang, which is another FOSS compiler^[96] but is under a permissive license.^[97] LWN speculated that Apple was motivated partly by a desire to avoid GPLv3.^[96] The Samba project also switched to GPLv3, so Apple replaced Samba in their software suite by a closed-source, proprietary software alternative.^[98]

Skewed prioritization, ineffectiveness and egoism of developers

Leemhuis criticizes the prioritization of skilled developers who − instead of fixing issues in already popular open-source applications and desktop environments − create new, mostly redundant software to gain fame and fortune.^[99]

He also criticizes notebook manufacturers for optimizing their own products only privately or creating workarounds instead of helping fix the actual causes of the many issues with Linux on notebooks such as the unnecessary power consumption.^[99]

Commercial ownership of open-source software

Mergers have affected major open-source software. Sun Microsystems (Sun) acquired MySQL AB, owner of the popular open-source MySQL database, in 2008.^[100]

Oracle in turn purchased Sun in January 2010, acquiring their copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Thus, Oracle became the owner of both the most popular proprietary database and the most popular open-source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open-source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community.^[101] Partly in response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community forked the project into new database systems outside of Oracle's control. These include MariaDB, Percona, and Drizzle.^[102] All of these have distinct names; they are distinct projects and cannot use the trademarked name MySQL.^[103]

Legal cases

Oracle v. Google

In August 2010, Oracle sued Google, claiming that its use of Java in Android infringed on Oracle's copyrights and patents. In May 2012, the trial judge determined that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents and ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable. The jury found that Google infringed a small number of copied files, but the parties stipulated that Google would pay no damages.^[104] Oracle appealed to the Federal Circuit, and Google filed a cross-appeal on the literal copying claim.^[105]

By defying ownership regulations in the construction and use of information—a key area of contemporary growth—the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement counters neoliberalism and privatization in general.^[106][107]

By realizing the historical potential of an "economy of abundance" for the new digital world FOSS may lay down a plan for political resistance or show the way towards a potential transformation of capitalism.^[107]

According to Yochai Benkler, Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, free software is the most visible part of a new economy of commons-based peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. As examples, he cites a variety of FOSS projects, including both free software and open-source.^[108]

Sources

• =See also==
• Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates
• Wikipedia:Featured lists
• Wikipedia:Handling trivia
• Wikipedia:Listcruft
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Glossaries
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works
  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Road junction lists
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