Dictionary

IT and computers are something that many people find difficult to understand, hence the problem that many important issues in the field do not get the publicity they should. Below is a technical glossary of terms used on the website.

Open source - the ownership of the program code is on an open license, which means that it is commonly owned by everyone. This means that there is public control over how the program works - and can ensure that there are no built-in backdoors that could lead to information leakage.

Proprietary software - ownership of the program code is privately owned. This means that there is no public control over how the software works and cannot guarantee whether any built-in information leaks exist.

The distinction between hardware and software (and their relationship) - the user communicates with the hardware through their input (which may be keystrokes) which then communicates with the operating system, which finally communicates with the application and provides an output to the user. During all these communications, information can leak. All of these can be "open source": hardware, operating system as well as software. Examples of hardware: Intel and Nvidia are not open source, while Novena and Arduino are. Operating system examples: Windows and Mac are not open source, while Linux and OpenBSD are. Software examples: Microsoft Word is not open source, while LibreOffice is.

Server - a computer system that 'serves' other computer systems (called clients) in a computer network is called a server.

Peer-to-peer network - is a non-hierarchical network, a computer network of linked nodes (computers) that do not communicate according to the client-server model.

Database - a collection of organised information stored in a computer system.

Blockchain - is a distributed (decentralised) database (DLT, there are others), i.e. a database stored in many copies - one on each node (computer) in a peer-to-peer network. Through cryptographic features and the fact that everything that happens ends up on a linked (each addition is dependent on the history) list, changes to the database (through data breaches, for example) are always detectable (unlike other systems) so that the nodes (computers, and therefore users) can restore the system.

Backend and frontend - frontend is the code around what you see on a page, backend is all other code that affects the page.