[Malvern] Free Software vs Open Source

[Richard Smedley]

> I seem to recall a little while ago Geoff asking what the differences
> were between Free Software and Open Source
> 
> The following article has come to light
> 
> http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=706208&rl=1

Ouch - w3m, links2 and lynx all refused to open the site. 
I knocked off the last 5 digit argument and tried again with lynx.
This time it opened up the site in Abiword.

Anyway, a quick skim didn't show anything to disagree with on the
first page, but I wasn't going to work out how to get to the second, and
this machine isn't running a graphical browser atm.

> As far as I can see they are almost one of the same, the only
> difference is that Open source can incorporate proprietory (charged
> for) software whereas free is free

Ian, you seem to have a few things confused here:

Proprietary software is software that is not free to be
shared/examined/improved. Occasionally the source may be available for
inspection (cf MS's shared source for Windows CE).
OSS supporters often refer to proprietary as closed source.

Commercial Software is software written and / or maintained for a
profit.
It may be proprietary or free. In the case of our C.I.C. we use and
sell software commercially, but it is all Free Software.

Free Software is about the freedoms to share, learn from, modify and
improve - see your linmk, or any of the essays at gnu.org
All Free Software is open source.


Open Source - you can look at the source and (probably) alter it. If it
fits the OSI definition you can also benefit from the same freedoms as
any piece of Free Software - however many companies call their software
Open Source without offering these freedoms.
Thus much opens source is Free Software, some is not. Whether or not 
it is commercial is not related to its freedoms.

> It all has to have the source code freely available for further onward
> distribution within certain guidelines, and the ability to patch or
> improve where the user feels fit


As above, Free Software offers these freedoms. OSS, well it depends.

To answer the original question, in 1997 a group of people (ask
Google for the full story and attendance record) thought that
the uptake of Free Software was limited because either businesses
were (1) embarrassed to talk about freedom and ethics (2) due to a
limitation of the English language finding freedom-of-speech tainted
by association with free-of-charge, and judging the software
worthless.

Therefore they looked for a new term and came up with Open Source.
Now, instead of explaining that free meant freedom, we had to
explain what on earth source code was. I tried this for a couple of 
years but, when I saw proprietary software marketed as Open Source,
I went back to talking about Free Software and software freedom.

The current community of GNU/Linux users is split into two roughly
equal halves. The Free Software half stands for the importance of
user freedoms, and entirely Free Operating system, mostly using
GNU/Linux as the most convenient Free Software system.
The Open Source half likes cool technology, and uses GNU/Linux as
it is not the spaghetti-code mess of MS Windows. They enjoy the
advantages given by software freedom, but do not value them and hence
will tend to happily install and recommend BLOBs like the nVidia
drivers and wlan drivers . They will also often run proprietary software
like HalfLife or Oracle on their GNU/Linux systems.

No-one disputes the right of either camp to exist, but both sides
do not really understand the other.

As the sides both use and promote GNU/Linux to replace MS and
other proprietary systems, they are often thought of as one, but
however similar their methods, the differences are fundamental.

I hope that some of that makes sense, but I am afraid I am writing
in a hurry as I have an urgent project to get back to.

Cheers,

 - Richard