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- Last week for HFOSS(Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software IGME-582) at RIT I
- was introduced to three articles that pick apart the differences between
- "Free Software" and "Open Source Software" or "FOSS" and "FLOSS".
-
- - [How I coined the term 'open source' by Christine Peterson](https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software)
- - [When Free Software Isn't (Practically) Superior by Benjamin Mako Hill](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/when-free-software-isnt-practically-superior.html)
- - [Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software by Richard Stallman](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)
-
- Peterson's article discussed how she ended up coining the term Open Source and how
- that term ended up becoming widely used. She explained that Open Source software
- was a new word for Free Software that was used instead because it would be more
- friendly with businesses. At that time(and still to this point) Free software is
- confused with software that you can get at no cost. Free Software is really free
- as in speech rather than free as in beer. Peterson's phrase "Open Source"
- gained a foot hold with larger communities and businesses because it focused on
- the practical benefits of doing software development in a public manner. Open Source
- software focused on collaboration and how building software in the public could
- improve security -- this really enticed businesses. To this day we see that
- businesses like Microsoft latch on to the phrase Open Source.
-
- //todo image of microsoft hearts open source
-
- With this divide in phrasing, there was a ideological split as well. People like
- Stallman in the Free Software camp felt like the Open Source movement lacks integrity
- because they don't focus on Freedom like they do. In his article "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software",
- Stallman scarfs at the fact that some open source Linux distributions would offer the option
- to package proprietary(non-free) software.
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- In Hill's article he echoes the views of Stallman's article, however, he points out
- that in practice Free Software isn't doing "better" than Open Source Software.
- The median number of contributors to a SourceForge free software project is one.
- The large success of Open Source Software is large in due to the fact that it is
- able to draw in more developers and retain financial support from companies.
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- Despite the large overlap between Open Source software and Free Software, there
- are a few key distinctions. At a high level you can say that Free Software favors freedom,
- however, that is putting it in a very vague notion that can be interpreted in many ways.
- You could also put it in terms of the four R's of Free Software:
-
- - Read
- - Run
- - Repurpose
- - Redistribute
-
- However, I like to analyze the differences between FOSS and FLOSS by looking at license types
- that they use.
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