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Exam Information
Official specifications published by LPI
Exam Format
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Skills this practice test covers
- Tell copyleft licenses such as the GPL from permissive licenses such as the MIT License.
- Check whether two licenses are compatible before code under them is combined.
- Pick a Creative Commons license that matches how a work may be shared and changed.
- Explain how companies earn money from open source, from support contracts to hosted services.
- Describe releases, versioning and community roles in an open source project.
- Use source code management terms such as commits, branches, forks and merge requests.
Explore related topics
050-100 exam content
6 domains · 19 topics · 150 questions
Software Fundamentals12.5%19 questions
This topic area builds the technical base for the rest. Candidates explain source code, compilers, interpreters and libraries, compare software architectures such as monoliths and microservices, and weigh running software on premises against the cloud.
Skills tested
- Explain how source code becomes machine code or byte code through a compiler, an interpreter or a linker.
- Compare client and server computing, monolithic architectures and microservice architectures.
- Describe cloud service models such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and weigh cloud against on-premises.
Questions by topic
- 051.1 Software Components8
- 051.2 Software Architecture7
- 051.3 On-Premises and Cloud Computing4
Open Source Software Licenses22.5%34 questions
The largest topic area explains what open source licenses allow and require. Candidates compare the free software and open source definitions, the copyleft licenses of the GPL family, and permissive licenses such as MIT, BSD and Apache.
Skills tested
- Explain copyright, patents and the grants that a software license gives.
- Compare the obligations of GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPLv3 and AGPLv3.
- Describe permissive licenses such as the MIT License, the BSD licenses and the Apache License version 2.0.
- Explain dual licensing and when two licenses are compatible.
Questions by topic
- 052.1 Concepts of Open Source Software Licenses11
- 052.2 Copyleft Software Licenses14
- 052.3 Permissive Software Licenses9
Open Content Licenses12.5%19 questions
This topic area covers licenses for works that are not code, such as text, images, music and data. Candidates explain the Creative Commons license elements and their combinations, and other licenses for documentation, data and open access.
Skills tested
- Combine the Creative Commons elements BY, SA, NC and ND into a license that fits a goal.
- Explain public domain dedications such as CC0.
- Describe licenses for documentation and data, such as the GNU Free Documentation License.
Questions by topic
- 053.1 Concepts of Open Content Licenses6
- 053.2 Creative Commons Licenses9
- 053.3 Other Open Content Licenses4
Open Source Business Models17.5%26 questions
Open source is free to use, yet companies build businesses on it. This topic area covers revenue for software developers and service providers, and the compliance work, such as an SBOM or an OSPO, that keeps legal risk low.
Skills tested
- Explain models such as dual licensing, freemium, enterprise and community versions, and hosted services.
- Describe how service providers earn revenue through support, consulting and service level agreements.
- Track license obligations with a software bill of materials and an open source program office.
Questions by topic
- 054.1 Software Development Business Models8
- 054.2 Service Provider Business Models9
- 054.3 Compliance and Risk Mitigation9
Project Management17.5%26 questions
This topic area covers how open source projects are run. Candidates compare development models such as Waterfall, Agile and DevOps, plan releases and versions, and describe community roles and governance documents.
Skills tested
- Compare Waterfall, Scrum and Kanban, and explain the DevOps idea.
- Plan major and minor releases, feature freezes and Long Term Support versions.
- Describe core team members, occasional contributors, codes of conduct and contribution agreements.
Questions by topic
- 055.1 Software Development Models11
- 055.2 Product Management / Release Management9
- 055.3 Community Management6
Collaboration and Communication17.5%26 questions
The last topic area covers the tools that keep a project working together. Candidates describe development tools and testing types, source code management with branches, tags, forks and merges, and the channels used for communication and documentation.
Skills tested
- Describe integrated development environments (IDEs), debuggers, linters and CI/CD pipelines.
- Use Git terms such as commits, branches, tags, forks and merge requests.
- Choose between mailing lists, chat platforms and issue trackers for a project task.
Questions by topic
- 056.1 Development Tools8
- 056.2 Source Code Management10
- 056.3 Communication and Collaboration Tools7
- 055.3 Community Management1
Requirements
- No formal prerequisites: anyone can book the exam.
About the 050-100 exam
Open Source Essentials (050-100) is LPI's entry-level certificate for anyone whose work touches free and open source software. It looks at open source from several sides: software basics, licenses for code and for content, business models, project management, and the tools that projects use to work together. No commands or system administration appear in the objectives. The certificate belongs to LPI's vendor-neutral Essentials track, and it does not expire.
Open Source Software Licenses is the largest topic area, so the PlanetCert practice test gives it the most questions, with copyleft licenses at the top. The explanations compare license terms side by side, for example what the GPL requires when a program is conveyed and what the MIT License leaves out. Flashcard mode suits the many license names and Creative Commons combinations. Brainy AI Assistant can explain whether two licenses are compatible, or why a hosted service changes what the AGPL asks of a company.
How to earn the certification
- Earns
- Open Source EssentialsEssentials (entry-level certificate)
The certificate has lifetime validity and needs no renewal.
- After
- 101-500 LPIC-1 Exam 101
One of the two exams for the LPIC-1 Linux Administrator certification, where Linux system administration begins.
- 102-500 LPIC-1 Exam 102
The second LPIC-1 exam. The certification needs both.
- 101-500 LPIC-1 Exam 101
How to prepare for 050-100
- 1
Read LPI's free learning materials
LPI publishes free Learning Materials for Open Source Essentials that follow the exam objectives topic by topic. Read one topic, then answer the practice questions for that topic before moving on.
- 2
Build a license comparison table
Put the GPL family, the Mozilla Public Licence, the Eclipse Public License, MIT, BSD and Apache 2.0 in rows. Fill in what each allows, what each requires and whether it is copyleft, since licenses carry the most weight in this exam.
- 3
Sort the Creative Commons combinations
Write out each combination of BY, SA, NC and ND, and note which ones allow commercial use or changes. Then do the same for CC0 and the GNU Free Documentation License.
- 4
Contribute to a public repository
Fork a small project, make a commit on a branch and open a merge request or pull request. The source code management objectives are much easier after doing each step once.
- 5
Close with mixed timed practice
Take the 050-100 practice test in Timed Mode once every topic area has been read. Review each missed business model or project management question, and ask Brainy AI Assistant to explain the term behind it.
Start a timed 050-100run
LPI publishes free official Learning Materials for Open Source Essentials, including a downloadable PDF, for self-study or classroom use.
Who 050-100 is for
- Developers who need to know what the licenses in their dependencies allow.
- Project and product managers who plan releases in open source projects.
- Lawyers, sales staff and account managers whose work involves open source products.
- Staff of an Open Source Program Office who need a shared base of knowledge.
Typical job titles: Software developer · Project manager · Product manager · Open source program manager · Technical account manager
050-100 glossary
18 terms from the exam objectives and the vendor's official material, each defined in a sentence.
- Apache License version 2.0
- A permissive license that also gives users an explicit patent license from each contributor.
- Byte code
- An intermediate form of a program that a virtual machine or an interpreter runs, instead of the processor running it directly.
- CC0
- A Creative Commons tool with which an author gives up their rights and places a work as close to the public domain as possible.
- Copyleft
- A license rule that requires changed versions of a work to be shared under the same license terms.
- Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)
- A content license that allows reuse with credit, provided that changed works are shared under the same license.
- Developer Certificates of Origin (DCO)
- A statement that a contributor signs on each contribution to confirm the right to submit it under the project's license.
- Dual licensing
- Offering the same software under two licenses, often a copyleft license and a commercial one, so users can choose.
- Feature freeze
- A point in a release cycle after which no new features are added, so the team can focus on fixing bugs.
- Forks
- Copies of a project's code that continue on their own, sometimes as a separate project with its own community.
- GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 (AGPLv3)
- A copyleft license that also requires the source code to be offered to people who use the program over a network.
- GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3)
- A copyleft license that requires anyone who conveys the program to make its source code available under the same license.
- GNU Lesser General Public License Version 3 (LGPLv3)
- A weaker copyleft license, often used for libraries, that lets other programs link to the library without taking on its license.
- License compatibility
- Whether the terms of two licenses allow code under each of them to be combined into one work.
- Long Term Support (LTS)
- A release that receives fixes and security updates for a longer time than normal releases.
- MIT License
- A short permissive license that allows almost any use, provided that the copyright notice and license text stay with the code.
- Open Source Program Office (OSPO)
- A team inside an organization that manages its use of and contributions to open source, including license compliance.
- Permissive license
- A license that allows use, change and redistribution, even inside closed products, with few obligations.
- Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)
- A list of all the components in a piece of software, with their versions and licenses.