"..RMS’s other mission here is to promote the Free Software Movement. The creator of the GPL...is at pains to correct misunderstandings of what the term free software means and to draw a distinction between it and the open source movement.

"Stallman makes a clear distinction between the free software and open source movements. The free software movement is based on values of freedom and social solidarity, he said, while the open source movement is thinking about practical benefits only, and forgets what’s most important..."

"As the founder of the free software movement and author of the GNU General Public License, I am writing to correct a misleading characterisation of free software presented in William Venema's article about open source. National Law Journal, Oct. 20. I do not wish to defend open source, which I have never supported.

“Open Source” advocate: «...I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software...» --

Hearing the terms "free software" or "open source," you might imagine that they referred to a single school of thought. Even "free and open source software" (FOSS) suggests only two different outlooks: Free software, which values political and philosophical freedom, and open source, whose main interest is enhanced software quality.

"...RMS also spend some time on elaborating why people shouldn't just talk about 'Linux' when they discuss those distributions they run on their computers, but instead should call it GNU/Linux [...] GNU's philosophy and motivation is the freedom of users, while Linux does not represent those values at all.

"...In 1998, some of the people in the free software community began using the term "open source software" instead of "free software" to describe what they do. The term "open source" quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable. The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with different views and goals, although we can and do work together on some practical projects..."

" The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program which is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users’ freedom.

RMS: "...My advice is don’t make the mistake of thinking about software only in terms of practical convenience. Don’t forget about freedom. Don’t forget about social solidarity. Anyone trying to stop you from sharing information, is trying to tax society. Don’t let them get away with it. If you develop software, respect the freedom of the user. Don’t try to subjugate other people and don’t let anybody subjugate you. You deserve to be free."