55 terms
- AGPL
- Affero GPL (network copyleft): offering a modified version over a network can trigger an obligation to provide its source.
- AI Act
- EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689): the EU's comprehensive AI law. It is commonly described as four risk tiers, but that is the Commission's explanatory model, not a statutory taxonomy: the Regulation is structured as Art.5 (prohibitions), Art.6 + Annex III (high-risk), Art.50 (transparency duties, entry into application 2026-08-02) and Chapter V (general-purpose AI models).
- AWS
- Amazon Web Services: a cloud provider that rents compute and managed services.
- BSL
- Business Source License: a source-available, OSI-non-approved license (e.g., Terraform).
- BY
- Attribution (a Creative Commons license element): you must credit the author.
- CC0
- A public-domain dedication that waives copyright (note: it does not waive or grant patent rights).
- CDK
- Cloud Development Kit: define infrastructure in a general-purpose programming language and synthesize it into templates (e.g., AWS CDK).
- CDN
- Content Delivery Network: servers distributed worldwide that deliver content from a location near the user.
- CI
- Continuous integration: automatically building and testing code changes.
- CLOUD Act
- A 2018 US statute compelling US communication/cloud providers to disclose data even when stored outside the US (18 U.S.C. §2713).
- DB
- Database: a system for storing, searching, and managing data.
- DNS
- Domain Name System: translates domain names into IP addresses (the internet's address lookup).
- DPA
- Data Protection Authority (by context also Data Processing Agreement).
- DSL
- Domain-Specific Language: a language designed for a specific purpose (e.g., a language for describing infrastructure config).
- DSM
- EU Digital Single Market Copyright Directive (2019/790).
- ELv2
- Elastic License v2: a source-available license from Elastic.
- FDE
- Full-Disk Encryption: encrypts the entire disk so data stays unreadable if the device is lost or stolen.
- FISA
- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; its Section 702 (50 U.S.C. §1881a) authorizes compelling US companies to hand over communications of non-US persons abroad.
- GDPR
- General Data Protection Regulation: the EU rule governing the handling of personal data of people in the EU.
- GitHub
- A platform for hosting source code and collaborating on it; much OSS is published there.
- GPL
- GNU General Public License: whole-work copyleft; when you distribute a derivative work, its full source must be made available to recipients under the GPL.
- HSM
- Hardware Security Module: dedicated hardware that generates and holds keys and never lets them leave in plaintext.
- IDS
- Intrusion Detection System: detects and alerts on malicious traffic, without blocking.
- IPS
- Intrusion Prevention System: detects and automatically blocks malicious traffic.
- ISMAP
- ISMAP (Information system Security Management and Assessment Program): Japan's program for assessing and registering cloud services for government use.
- Issue
- A unit on GitHub for filing and tracking a task, request, or intake one at a time.
- KMS
- Key Management Service: a managed service that stores, issues, and audits encryption keys (AWS KMS / Azure Key Vault / Google Cloud KMS).
- LGPL
- Lesser GPL (weak copyleft): with dynamic linking the obligation is limited and your own code can stay under its own license.
- MFA
- Multi-factor authentication: confirming identity with a factor beyond your password.
- MLAT
- Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty: the proper—but slow—route for a foreign government to obtain data from US providers.
- MPL
- Mozilla Public License: file-level (limited) copyleft; obligations apply per modified file.
- NC
- NonCommercial (a Creative Commons license element): forbids use primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation, judged by the nature of the use.
- ND
- NoDerivatives (a Creative Commons license element): forbids distributing modified versions (derivatives).
- ngrok
- a tunnel that temporarily exposes your local PC to the internet (free tier available).
- NSL
- National Security Letter: an FBI administrative order (18 U.S.C. §2709) for subscriber/transactional records without a court order, often with a gag order.
- OSI
- Open Source Initiative: the non-profit that maintains the Open Source Definition and certifies whether a license is open source.
- OSS
- Open Source Software: source code is published and anyone may use, modify, and redistribute it within the license terms.
- PD
- Public domain: works whose copyright has expired or been waived, free for anyone to use.
- PoC
- Proof of Concept: a small trial to confirm technical viability before full adoption.
- robots.txt
- A file at a site's root that tells crawlers, per User-Agent, which pages they may fetch (standardized as RFC 9309).
- SA
- ShareAlike (a Creative Commons license element): adaptations must be released under the same license.
- SaaS
- Software as a Service: software used over the network as a service rather than installed locally.
- SBOM
- Software Bill of Materials: an inventory of the parts (dependencies, including transitive ones) a piece of software uses.
- SMS
- Short Message Service: text messages sent to a phone number; sometimes used for verification codes, though weak against number takeover.
- SPDX
- An industry-standard short identifier that uniquely names a license (e.g., MIT / Apache-2.0).
- SSPL
- Server Side Public License: offering the software as a service requires disclosing the service source (including the management UI and storage); OSI-non-approved.
- TDE
- Transparent Data Encryption: the database automatically encrypts its stored files; the app uses it with no code changes.
- TLS
- Transport Layer Security: encrypts traffic; what `https://` relies on.
- ToS
- Terms of Service: the contract between the provider and you — what you may use it for and how inputs and outputs are handled.
- transitive dependencies
- Indirect dependencies: libraries that your direct dependencies themselves rely on.
- VLAN
- Virtual LAN: logically segments a single physical network without changing the wiring.
- VPN
- Virtual Private Network: an encrypted tunnel over a public network for secure remote access to a private network.
- VPS
- A virtual server rented in the cloud (from a few dollars/month) to keep your own tool always on.
- WAF
- Web Application Firewall: detects and blocks web-app attacks (e.g., SQL injection).
- XSS
- Cross-Site Scripting: injecting malicious scripts into a web page so they run in a visitor's browser.