| Security Education Companion Skip to main content
 
Security Education Companion
A free resource for digital security educators

Open-source software

Open source software, or free software, is software that can be distributed freely in a form that lets others modify it and rebuild it from scratch. While it is known as “free software," it's not necessarily free as in zero-cost: FLOSS programmers can ask for donations, or charge for support or for copies. Linux is an example of a free, open source program, as are Firefox and Tor.