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Open Source After 12 Years
GMGruman writes "12 years ago, seven people in a room coined the term "open source" and launched what initially seemed like a quixotic exercise. Today, open source is mainstream, with original believers such as Red Hat worth billions and superpowers such as Oracle buying in. But open source has changed along the way, says InfoWorld's Peter Wayner, and may change more in coming years."
The Open Source Initiative, founded by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond was founded in 1998, 12 years ago as of 2010. This is what the article refers to.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Free Software.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
You were using free software. According to Richard Stallman, the difference is philosophical, although in practice they achieve the same results: the production of more free software.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I don't have documents that old, but back in the day Stallman was pushing the GPL because GPLed software stayed free, not because it was the only free software. Since then, the FSF has published, on its website, some of Stallman's writings on the point.
Stallman has defined what Free Software is (it's his term, I guess he gets to define it), and provided a list of Free Software licenses (along, of course, with notes on which are copyleft licenses and which compatible with the GPL). You can go look it up.
Stallman's view on the terms is that he was explicitly fostering a social movement for Free Software (one of his oddities is that he considers non-Free Software to be immoral), and believes the Open Source movement to be fostering a technical movement, which is much less threatening to business but doesn't serve his ends nearly as well.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes