Gerry,
thanks for your expertise on this. I will mark this mail for further
reference, in case I will need it some time. It is a really good
digest on the subject of freed software.
Thanks a lot, Mike
On Fr 16 Jul 2010 04:07:47 CEST Gerry Reno wrote:
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:
- Free Software (FS)
- Open Source Software (OSS)
- Free (Libre) Open Source Software (FOSS, FLOSS)
- 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?
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.
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to
make it do what you wish.- The freedom to redistribute copies.
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.
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".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.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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