Open-system
noun, Thermodynamics.
1.
a region separated from its surroundings by a boundary that admits a transfer of matter or energy across it.
noun
1.
(computing) an operating system that is not specific to a particular supplier, but conforms to more widely compatible standards
noun
a changeable and alterable set of doctrines, ideas, or things; a system that is affected by outside influences
open system
A physical system that interacts with other systems. The physical description of an open system can appear to violate conservation laws; for example, in a good description of the mechanism of energy transfer in a car engine (gears, driveshaft, and so on), energy will appear to be lost from the system over time, despite the law of conservation of energy. This is because the system is open, losing energy (in the form of heat) to surrounding systems (through friction). A system that loses energy in this way also called a dissipative system. Compare closed system.
Read Also:
- Open system architecture
operating system (OSA) A competitor to IBM’s SNA. (2005-03-07)
- Open systems interconnect
Open Systems Interconnection
- Open systems interconnection
networking (OSI-RM, OSI Reference Model, seven layer model) A model of network architecture and a suite of protocols (a protocol stack) to implement it, developed by ISO in 1978 as a framework for international standards in heterogeneous computer network architecture. The OSI architecture is split between seven layers, from lowest to highest: 1 physical layer, […]
- Open telecom platform
communications, library, Erlang (OTP) A set of standard, open source libraries and tools for use with Erlang. (http://erlang.org/faq/t1.html#AEN17). (2001-08-28)
- Open texture
noun 1. (philosophy) the failure of natural languages to determine future usage, particularly the ability of predicates to permit the construction of borderline cases