Open Source

Open source refers to software (and increasingly, other creative or technical works) whose source code is made publicly available for anyone to view, use, modify, and redistribute, typically under a licence that formalises those permissions. This stands in contrast to proprietary or closed-source software, where the underlying code is kept private and users are only granted a limited right to use the compiled product.

The open source model is built on collaborative development — anyone can inspect the code, propose changes, fix bugs, or build on top of the project, often coordinated through public repositories on platforms like GitHub. This transparency is also a security and trust benefit: code that anyone can audit is harder to hide malicious behaviour or unnoticed flaws within, compared to a closed system nobody outside the vendor can inspect.

Licensing matters significantly in open source — licences like MIT, Apache 2.0, and the GPL family differ in what they require of anyone building on the work (for example, whether derivative works must also be open sourced), so the specific licence attached to a project meaningfully shapes how it can be used.

Role in this vault

Open source principles run through much of the tooling behind this vault itself — Quartz is an open source static site generator, Obsidian plugins are largely community-built and open source, and local AI tools like Ollama rely on open-weight models released under various open licences. This pillar anchors notes on specific open source tools, projects, and licensing considerations as they come up.