aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

“Free” or “Open Source”?

We’re soon ready to open our new Ubuntu Lab (built with used machines) and the question that has come up is whether to call it “free” or “open source.” Who knew that it could be a debate?

Here’s Richard Stallman on Why “Free Software” is better than “Open Source:”

While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas.

In 1998, some of the people in the free software community began using the term “open source software” instead of “free software” to describe what they do.  The term “open source” quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable.  The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with different views and goals, although we can and do work together on some practical projects.

The fundamental difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways of looking at the world.  For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one.  As one person put it, “Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.” For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution.  For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.

It looks like we’ll wind up saying “free or open source software” abbreviated as FOSS.

Thanks Jason! (btw, Stallman’s text has line breaks too.)