What is open source? A plain English explainer

Understanding open source software: Why transparency and collaboration matter in shared code.

What is open source software? In this 2-minute explainer, we break down open source in plain English. No jargon, just a cookie recipe analogy that makes it click. Open source means the source code behind software is publicly accessible: Anyone can view it, modify it, and share improvements. Think of it like publishing your cookie recipe right on the box instead of keeping it secret. That’s the power of open source, creation through collaboration, transparency, and security through openness.

In this video you’ll learn:

• What open source software actually means
• Why transparency and collaboration matter in code
• The cookie recipe analogy that makes it click
• How open source impacts the software you use every day

More open source resources from the podcast

Want the full picture? This clip came from a longer conversation with Bryan Behrenshausen about the real work behind open source program offices on the We Love Open Source podcast.

• 🎙️ Watch the full episode
• 📺 Catch up on the series

More from We Love Open Source

• 15 open source backup solutions to protect your data
• The AI slop problem threatening open source maintainers
• Why 1.3 billion people depend on progress, not perfection
• Stop guessing, start measuring developer engagement
• 5 forces driving DevOps and AI in 2026

Full transcript

Bryan, what is open source?

So, the term open source refers to something that can be modified and shared because its design is publicly accessible. In the context of computer development, it refers to source code that’s licensed in a way that people can view the code, share the code, modify the code, and share their modifications with other people.

At the heart of that ethos is an ethos of collaboration, an ethos of sharing, and an ethos of security through transparency. We do better work when we’re clear about what we’re doing and when we are collaborative in what we do.

So if I were to say to you, think about a recipe. Maybe you’re really good at making cookies, right? And you could do a couple things with the recipe for your cookies. You could pull that recipe away. You could squirrel away with it and never share it with anybody. Make your cookies. People will buy them from you and you can continue to make a profit by selling those cookies, but the recipe, you hold to yourself.

Or you can take the recipe for those cookies and slap them right on the box of the cookies. So you’re not only selling the cookies, but you’re selling the recipe. You’re empowering your customer base to not only eat the cookies, but to understand how they’re made, to understand if there’s anything dangerous in them, to modify them, to add ingredients or subtract ingredients, to help and to collaborate with you globally on best practices to improve the recipe.

The source code is the recipe for the software we use every day. And so when we open source our software, we’re giving others permission to look at the recipe, understand how the things that are made that govern our lives are operating, and potentially change them. That’s the power of open source.