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 sub optimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.
FREE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
Relationship between the Free Software movement and Open Source movement :
The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are like two political camps within the free software community.
Radical groups in the 1960s developed a reputation for factionalism: organizations split because of disagreements on details of strategy, and then treated each other as enemies. Or at least, such is the image people have of them, whether or not it was true.
The relationship between the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement is just the opposite of that picture. We disagree on the basic principles, but agree more or less on the practical recommendations. So we can and do work together on many specific projects. We don’t think of the Open Source movement as an enemy. The enemy is proprietary software.
We are not against the Open Source movement, but we don’t want to be lumped in with them. We acknowledge that they have contributed to our community, but we created this community, and we want people to know this. We want people to associate our achievements with our values and our philosophy, not with theirs. We want to be heard, not obscured behind a group with different views. To prevent people from thinking we are part of them, we take pains to avoid using the word “open” to describe free software, or its contrary, “closed”, in talking about non-free software.
So please mention the Free Software movement when you talk about the work we have done, and the software we have developed—such as the GNU/Linux operating system.
Practical Differences between Free Software and Open Source:
In practice, open source stands for criteria a little weaker than those of free software. As far as we know, all existing free software would qualify as open source. Nearly all open source software is free software, but there are exceptions. First, some open source licenses are too restrictive, so they do not qualify as free licenses. Fortunately, few programs use those licenses.
Second, and more important, many products containing computers (including many Android devices) come with executable programs that correspond to free software source code, but the devices do not allow the user to install modified versions of those executable; only one special company has the power to modify them. We call these devices “tyrants”, and the practice is called “ Tivoization ” after the product where we first saw it. These executable are not free software even though their source code is free software. The criteria for open source do not recognize this issue; they are concerned solely with the licensing of the source code.
This rest of this article compare the two terms “free software” and “open source”. It shows why the term “open source” does not solve any problems, and in fact creates some. Continue reading
Asharam Seervi 