Slashdot Mirror
The Semantics of Free Software vs. Open Source
An anonymous reader writes "As the end-of-year technology round-ups begin, LinuxWorld's Kevin Bedell notes that in his opinion no useful distinction is served any longer by preserving the two separate terms 'open source software' and 'free software'. One interesting sidelight: Bedell says that 'one of the leaders of the open source movement' wrote to him in an exchange they had on this topic: 'The distinction between 'open source' and 'free software' is not technical; it's the same code and licenses. Nor is it social; it's the same developers. It's strictly one of attitude - are we focused on moralism and changing peoples' thoughts (free software) or on results and changing peoples' behavior (open source)?'"
you wouldn't have this problem is Stallman had chosen a verb rather than a noun, such as "free programming."
Open Source is "here's the source, you can see what it does, feel free to use the source to make something else."
Free Software is "everyone has the right to see what their computer's doing, and do whatever they want with the software on their computer."
(The headaches start because GPL'd "Free Software" is rather antagonistic to those that want to make a living selling software. It's hard to profit when anyone can copy your product and sell it for half price.)
Here in the corporate world, the term 'open source' works better than 'free software'. The 'free' software (in upper management's mind) means questionable quality and no support, while 'open source' means that there might be some support available. Sure, it sounds crazy, but in big corporations they are used to spending good money for software, and the idea of 'free' is slow to catch on. Still, we have had lots of success getting 'free' and 'open source' products in the door, but we had to move slow and keep it quiet at first.
The difference is in the motivations:
Free Software is motivated by the moral need to create a Free Way to use computers -- to free software users from their "masters".
Open Source software is motivated by the practical advantages of the Open Source development process.
The Free Software movement is more idealist: "Don't use it if its not free, whether or not there are practical advantages".
The Open Source movement is more pragmatic, even at the cost of some Freedom: "Use whatever is better technically for your purpose, even if its not free".
When someone says free software in this context it means libre. free software and freeware are not the same thing at all. freeware is software you can use without paying for it, and free software is software you can use/sell/modify/kludge/hack/whatever without obligation. freeware is beer free, free software is freedom free. open source software can be free software, or not, and it can be freeware, or not. It's all in how the product is licensed. And, as the original article indicates, it's largely a matter of semantics. For a lot of people it's still a pretty important difference though.
The laugh I'm having is that it reminds me of Monty Python and the People's front of Judea vs. The Judean Peoples Front.
That said, I think should be enough....
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
I could be wrong, but IMO, they aren't the same licenses. The GPL and BSD licenses differ quite a bit.
Both the BSD licenses and the GPL are free and open source licenses. That even includes the old BSD license with the advertising clause that was incompatible with the GPL.
But your thought is a good one (and correct) even if your example is flawed. A better example would be Apple's AAPL, which is an open source license that is neither free nor compatible with the GPL.
See http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.htmlfor an excellent overview of licenses and how they affect your freedom and/or protect you as the author.
Many Open Source licenses are not free (by either the FSF/GNU definition or the BSD Folks' definition), and clearly a distinction is both necessary and important. Anyone claiming otherwise quite obviously has an ulterior motive and agenda which they feel is furthered by obfuscating what is implied by a Free License and what is implied by an Open Source License, and that agenda certainly appears to be at odds with the free software community and a large part of the open source community.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It worked for Freedom Fries so it should work for software too.
Free Software - This is software which is Free, as in speech. As in the wind. As in thought. This software gives the users four basic freedoms -
- Freedom 0) The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- Freedom 1) The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
- Freedom 2) The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- Freedom 3) The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Source: The Free Software Definition. Also I would like to note that not only is "free as in beer" not a part of the Free Software philosophies, but the FSF has sold copies of it's sotware since day one! In the beginning of the movement RMS used to sell tapes of emacs for $300 to put a roof over his head. Today the FSF will sell a rather pricey distro, hand compiled for you by the boys at the FSF. This is _NOT_ about free as in beer.The Free Software movement is about Freedom to use my programs without restrictions (read your EULA, folks), Freedom to give copies of the program(s) to others (sorry, can't give you a copy of photoshop even if you're going to use it only once), Freedom to modify the programs (This program is close to what we need but does not suit our businesses' needs. I'll have my IT boys fix it.), and the Freedom to create a community working together to create great software. More information can be found on GNU's philosophy pages.
Open Source - While the Open Source definition mirrors the Free Software definition in many ways, the two are far from the same in theory and are almost totally different in practice. Real world experience shows that the Open Source movment is far more interested in bug checking than freedom - insert the "many eyes" statement here. This is more development model than philosophy, while FS focuses on the "why", OS focuses on the "how". This is what gets Free Software fans in arms - we worry more about what the software will let us do than about how the software was made. An excellent explination of this is "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again", written by Open Source co-founder and Debian guru Bruce Perens (/. profile).
Since this post is getting very wordy, I'll close with something I've noticed over the past year or so - When a lot of slashdotters talk about Open Source they're really talking about the freedoms that the Free Software philosophies have given them. Look around at the stories and comments and keep in mind what both movments really are, you'll be quite amazed.
(Please forgive my terse presentation - this can be a very deep subject and I wanted to keep it as brief as possible.)