AboutWelcome to Free Software Daily (FSD). FSD is a hub for news and articles by and for the free and open source community. FSD is a community driven site where members of the community submit and vote for the stories that they think are important and interesting to them. Click the "About" link to read more...
"Ordinarily, when you think of the phrase ‘free software’, the definition that comes to mind is a piece of tool that can be used or modified freely without any restriction.
The methodologies of Open Source are not owned or guided by any one person. The closest thing we have are the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and support of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The OSI certifies what qualifies as an open source license.
"Reading Eben Moglen’s keynote address, “Freeing the Mind: Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture,” I felt a bit like Richard Stallman while he worked to replace UNIX with GNU: reaching the same destination but apprehensive about the other guy’s route. Moglen, a law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, discusses free software v. the behemoths of software largely in moral terms..."
“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...» --
"Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is a suboptimal solution.
Forget now about labels and conventions: there is not such thing as free software, like there is not such thing as free speech. There are free developers and free speakers, and they are the ones setting the limits of freedom of their products and actions. If they are not free, how free can be the result of their actions?
"...When we launched Squish Software, we had goals of “open software.” We realized that openly supporting free and open source software, while not contributing back with our own software, was sort of hypocritical. So today we’re very excited to announce that we’re beginning to phase out ‘open software,’ and phase in true free software.
In reading through IDC's excellent report, "2007 Industry Adoption of Open Source Software, Part 2: Project Adoption," analyst Matt Lawton stumbles across an intriguing observation in open-source software adoption. He apparently believes it is a weakness of the current open-source landscape, but I believe it is a strength. The observation? That IT departments do most of the services around open source, rather than third-party consulting companies.
