The Drupal End User Documentation manual (available in pdf) was created by ENGL 421, Fall 2004. From the text:
The purpose of the Drupal End User Guide is to inform the user of the available features offered to them and how to maximize their use. The following pages contain information that can help guide a beginner as well as serve as a reference for the advanced user or system administrator. The guide describes in detail features that are common to most Drupal sites, and how to implement them in an effective manner.
The Open Source Initiative's description elaborates :
The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.
We in the open source community have learned that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits.
In principle, they are both about sharing. However, open source licenses always allow for modification of the original text/code. Some Creative Commons licenses do, some do not. And open source licenses are designed for software; Creative Commons, for text, audio, video, or music. You can learn more about the various open source licenses at the Open Source Initiative, the standards group which determines if a software license is open source. You can learn more about different types of CC licenses at Creative Commons.
People often imagine that open source software is "free software" because of the "Free Software" philosophy. "Free Software" is not "free" as in beer, but "free" as in speech. The belief is that people are entitled to certain freedoms to work with and use software. For more information, see The Free Software Definition.
Then releasing your software as open source or your text under a Creative Commons license that allows modification is not for you. The purpose of allowing modification is to reap the benefits of having others collaborate on the production of a piece of software or a text (such as Wikipedia). The power of the many to produce something better than the power of the few or the one. Having your work "out there" in the community where people might actually use it and refer to it can be invaluable for your career and professional development, which in turn can get you noticed by the right people, the ones you want to work with.
Anyone can suggest ideas. But open source projects are usually community-based and so contributions to the project are "approved" through a peer review process. The community and leadership of the project would have to approve any changes.
Please post your questions as comments to this page so that this FAQ can be updated for use in the future.