Question 1

True or false: Open source software always requires users to pay for commercial use.

Accepted Answer

False. Most open source licenses allow free commercial use; payment is only needed for support or additional features.

Question 2

True or false: Open source software is inherently less secure than proprietary software due to public code.

Accepted Answer

False. Public code allows more eyes to find and fix vulnerabilities, often making it more secure, not less.

Question 3

True or false: Open source software can be sold for profit, as long as the source code remains freely available.

Accepted Answer

True. Licenses like the GPL allow selling copies, but you must also distribute the source code under the same license.

Question 4

True or false: The first open source license, the GNU General Public License, was created in 1989.

Accepted Answer

True. Richard Stallman published the first version of the GPL in 1989, laying the foundation for modern open source.

Question 5

True or false: The Apache HTTP Server has been the most popular web server since 1996.

Accepted Answer

True. Apache dominated the web server market from 1996 to around 2014, when Nginx began to catch up.

Question 6

True or false: The term 'open source' was coined by Netscape in 1998 to describe their browser release.

Accepted Answer

False. The term was actually coined by a group of developers at a strategy session in Palo Alto, not by Netscape alone.

Question 7

True or false: Linux Torvalds originally released Linux under a proprietary license before switching to GPL.

Accepted Answer

True. The first version of Linux (0.01) had a restrictive license; Torvalds switched to the GNU GPL in 1992.

Question 8

True or false: All open source projects must use a license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Accepted Answer

False. Projects can call themselves open source without OSI approval, but to meet the official definition, an OSI-approved license is required.

Open Source Software Trivia Questions