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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. | |||||
| 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. | |||||
| 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. | |||||