FOSS - Free and Open Source Software

Richard Stallman is the founder of the Open Source Movement...!


Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software

When we call software “free”, we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms; the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech”, not “free beer”.... :D

These freedoms are essentially important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but because they promote social solidarity — that is, sharing and co-operation. They become even more important as more and more of our culture and life activities are digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images and words, free software comes increasingly to equate with freedom in general.
Millions of people around the world now use free software; the schools of regions of India and Spain now teach all students to use the free GNU(GNU is Not Unix) / Linux operating system. But most of these users have never heard of the ethical reasons for which we developed this system and built the free software community, because today this system and community are more often described as “open source,” and attributed to a different philosophy in which these freedoms are hardly mentioned.


Some of the proponents of “open source” considered it a “marketing campaign for free software,” which would appeal to business executives by citing practical benefits, while avoiding ideas of right and wrong that they might not like to hear. Other proponents flatly rejected the free software movement's ethical and social values. Whichever their views, when campaigning for “open source” they did not cite or advocate those values. The term “open source” quickly became associated with the practice of citing only practical values, such as making powerful, reliable software. Most of the supporters of “open source” have come to it since then, and that practice is what they take it to mean.

Non-free software is a social problem, and moving to free software is the solution.
Free software.

Open source. If it's the same software, does it matter which name you use? Yes, because different words convey different ideas. While a free program by any other name would give you the same freedom today, establishing freedom in a lasting way depends above all on teaching people to value freedom. If you want to help do this, it is essential to speak about “free software.”
We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (non-free) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being misidentified as open source supporters.
Common misunderstandings of “free software” and “open source”
The term “free software” has a problem of misinterpretation: an unintended meaning, “software you can get for zero price,” fits the term just as well as the intended meaning, “software which gives the user certain freedoms.”

Unfortunately, all the alternatives in English have problems of their own. We've looked at many alternatives that people have suggested, but none is so clearly “right” that switching to it would be a good idea. Every proposed replacement for “free software” has some kind of semantic problem—and this includes “open source software.”
The official definition of “open source software” was derived indirectly from criteria for free software. It is not the same;
However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software” is “You can look at the source code,” and most people seem to think that's what it means. That is a much weaker criterion than free software, and much weaker than the official definition of open source. It includes many programs that are neither free nor open source.
Since that obvious meaning for “open source” is not the meaning that its advocates intend, the result is that most people misunderstand the term.

Linux is “open source” software meaning, simply, that anyone can get copies of its source code files.

OSS (Open Source Software )is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available, though the specific licensing agreements vary as to what one is allowed to do with that code.

The New York Times has stretched the term to refer to user beta testing — letting a few users try an early version and give confidential feedback — which proprietary software developers have practiced for decades.

It tends to accompany a misundertanding of “free software”, equating it to “GPL-covered software”. These are equally mistaken, since the GNU GPL is considered an open source license, and most of the open source licenses are considered free software licenses.