I first came across the term “open source” about 20 years ago and through various projects I found communities that supported and contributed to software that was freely available under various licences. Joomla is licenced as open source and it in turn sits on open source software including PHP, MySQL / MariaDB, the webserver software whether it’s Apache, NGINX and the server itself on a version of Linux (or Windows, which is not open source) All of this relies on contributors to add functionality, test changes, provide support through forums, repositories and documentation.
Read more https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/december-2024/how-to-contribute-to-joomla