There has always been confusion about the terms "free software" and
"open source software" and all the different open source licenses that
are available.
There are essentially four (4) categories of open source software:
1. Free Software (FS)
2. Open Source Software (OSS)
3. Free (Libre) Open Source Software (FOSS, FLOSS)
4. Commercial Open Source Software (COSS)
In all of these the term "free" does not have anything to do with
price. It means "freedom" as in liberty, unfettered, unconstrained,
etc. I think a better term might have been "freed" software to avoid
confusion and I will use that term here for clarity.
So what do these different terms mean?
1. Free(d) Software (FS) is software that is released in a
human-readable form (source code) and has applied to it a "free(d)
software license" defining the four freedoms, as first proposed and
championed by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, that are
granted to users of the software or it is put into the "public domain".
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)
The four freedoms are:
0. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to
make it do what you wish.
2. The freedom to redistribute copies.
3. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to
others.
2. Open Source Software (OSS) is not so clearly defined as was free(d)
software and there are various definitions available. The Open Source
Initiative tried to codify the concept of "open source" to mean no
restrictions to freely distribute the software, that the software must
contain at least the clear unobfuscated original source code and
optionally binary code, that the license must not discriminate against
any individual or group or field of endeavor or technology, that the
license grant all users the same rights as the author acquired and not
require the execution of a different license, that the license not
restrict the software to being part of a specific software assembly,
that the license not restrict other software.
(http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd). This is basically a clumsy
rewording of parts of the "free(d) software" definition. However many
open source licenses resulted that technically met the definition of
"open source" and yet were not "free(d) software licenses".
3. Free (Libre) Open Source Software (FOSS, FLOSS) is an attempt to
clarify that the software is both open source and licensed under a
"free(d) software license". In other words it is "free(d) software" as
per Stallman's FSF definition.
4. Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) is a category of open source
software that does not meet the criteria for a "free(d) software
license". Certain rights may be restricted to users of the software in
a "non-free" license despite the fact that it technically "open source".
NOTE: It is important to note that whenever a software is derived from a
"free(d) software license" such as the GPL that the copyleft
requirements permanently make all derived works as also being "free(d)
software". This means that when you link to a GPL library that you
cannot later decide to release the derived work under another license.
Just ask Linus Torvalds about this if you have any doubt.
And there is more to the story of free(d) and open source software that
just the software itself. There is the manner in which the software is
built.
There are the concepts of "open" and "closed" development processes.
In general the first three categories above usually involve "open"
development processes whereby a community is built surrounding the
software and is fully involved under the guidance of a free(d) or open
source "editor" who is the evangelist and de facto leader, the CEO if
you will, for the software project.
The last category of commercial open source usually involves a "closed"
development process where there is no or very little community and the
software is constructed without community involvement and is finally
released with its sources under some form of non-free open source license.
Today you find huge supportive communities built up around free(d) open
source software projects following an open development process. Take
for example Linux, where there are hundreds of thousands of community
members supporting distributions such as Fedora, Debian, Suse, Ubuntu,
Centos, and a host of others. If it weren't for the contributions of
thousands of volunteers under an open development process Linux would
never have been what it is today. And it's hard to name even one open
source project following a closed development process that has been
nearly as successful as the tens of thousands of open source projects
that have followed the open development process.
Gerry
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