The following are 5 ways that people misunderstand the concept of Free and Open Source Software.
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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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Free Software and Open Source
Another way to misunderstand Free and Open Source movements is to confuse the differences between them. For many lay people and journalists, the terms "open source" and "free" software are interchangeable. This is a mistake. One is a political movement and the other is a development model.
The free software movement is a social and political movement. The mission and purpose for this existance is to promote the freedom and cooperation that is an essential part of a free and moral society. Freedom and cooperation cannot occur when people choose to accept proprietary software. This occurs because the masters over the proprietary software require users to promise to remain helpless and divided. The users often accept (and equally as often break) these promises of helplessness and division.
The Open Source initiative is a software development model. This initiative was intended as a way of improving the efficiency of software development, thereby allowing users to benefit from powerful software earlier than would otherwise occur. It is said that this initiative was inspired by the free software movement.
While both exist in opposition to corporate behemoths, their ends and means are often in conflict. 'Open-source [partisans] never suggest that there's anything unethical about proprietary software,' says Stallman. 'They just don't want to rock that boat.' Instead, they 'want to convince businesses to adopt free software, and they figure that, if they raise any kind of ethical question, that it will be off-putting to businessmen.'
- http://thephoenix.com/Portland/News/94550-Tilting-at-Windows/?page=3