Thread: Confusion between free software and open source

There's been a lot of confusion between free software and open source. Would you like to say something about it?

Once Linux was put together with the GNU operating system in 1992 to make a complete free operating system, people started distributing the GNU /Linux operating system and telling friends about it, and they were mainly techies. People accustomed to judging software in technical terms, recommended the system to other people looking at the practical advantage of GNU /Linux systems and they did not mention these ethical issues.

Meanwhile, we in the free software movement were talking about these ethical issues. Some people listened to us and others listened to them. So during the 90s, a split, an argument, arose within the community between the people who valued the freedom and community above all and the people who only valued practical convenience.

In 1998 this group, which valued only superficial practical values, chose the term open source as a way to avoid mentioning or alluding to our ideas of freedom. Because that term had never been used, they could choose whatever idea to associate with it and leave out other ideas they did not want to mention. That's what they did. Ever since then, free software and open source are two fundamentally different philosophies based on different ideas of what is important.

So, the difference between the two philosophies is not just the detail, but goes down to the root. We have some criterion f6r free software, which is actually the criterion
for the licensing and distribution of the program. There is also a definition of open source that has a criterion of how a program is licensed and distributed. So, in practical terms, they come out fairly similar.

As far as I know, all free software is open source and nearly all open source programs are free software. But there are some open source programs that are non-free, and the reason is that they interpret their criterion for licensing in a way that is little bit more lax. So, there are some licences that they have accepted, but we have not.