There is no single organization which can
be said to head the Open Source Movement. Rather, there are a number
of different organizations which all pursue the same goal of freely distributable
and freely modifiable source code, albeit by different means. The
Free
Software Foundation pioneered the concept of free software in the 1980s
and is "dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution,
understanding, and modification of computer programs." Other prominent
organizations are opensource.org
and the Debian Project.
For some examples of software which is based on the open source model,
see the Linux Documentation
Project and Netscape
Communications which released its source code to the general public
in 1998.