Free and open source software
Encyclopedia
Free and open-source software (F/OSS, FOSS) or free/libre/open-source software (FLOSS) is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code
. This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporations.
In the context of free
and open-source software
, free refers to the freedom to copy and re-use the software, rather than to the price of the software. The Free Software Foundation
, an organization that advocates the free software model, suggests that, to understand the concept, one should "think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer".
FOSS is an inclusive term that covers both free software
and open source software, which despite describing similar development models, have differing cultures and philosophies. Free software focuses on the philosophical freedoms it gives to users, whereas open source software focuses on the perceived strengths of its peer-to-peer development model. FOSS is a term that can be used without particular bias towards either political approach.
Software which is both gratis
and free software
may be called gratis/libre/open-source software (GLOSS).
Free software licence
s and open source licenses are used by many software packages. While the licenses themselves are in most cases the same, the two terms grew out of different philosophies and are often used to signify different distribution methodologies.
and DECUS
. By the late 1960s change was inevitable: software costs were dramatically increasing, a growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products (free in that the cost was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of "free" software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM
, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive. While some software might always be free, there would be a growing amount of software that was for sale only. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the software industry
began using technical measures (such as only distributing binary copies
of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to study and customize software they had bought using reverse engineering
techniques. In 1980 the copyright law (Pub. L. No. 96-517, 94 Stat. 3015, 3028) was extended to computer programs in the United States
In 1983, Richard Stallman
, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU project
, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation
(FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto
. The manifesto also focused heavily on the philosophy of free software. He developed The Free Software Definition
and the concept of "copyleft
", designed to ensure software freedom for all.
The Linux kernel
, started by Linus Torvalds
, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. The licence wasn't exactly a free software licence, but with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License
. Much like Unix, Torvalds' kernel attracted the attention of volunteer programmers.
In 1997, Eric Raymond
published The Cathedral and the Bazaar
, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator
Internet suite as free software
. This code is today better known as Mozilla Firefox
and Thunderbird
.
Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring free software principles and benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the free software movement to emphasize the business potential of the sharing of source code. The new name they chose was "open source", and quickly Bruce Perens
, publisher Tim O'Reilly
, Linus Torvalds
, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative
was founded in February 1998 to encourage use of the new term and evangelize open source principles.
While the Open Source Initiative
sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, corporations found themselves increasingly threatened by the concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code
. A Microsoft
executive publicly stated in 2001 that "open source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business." This view perfectly summarizes the initial response to FOSS by the majority of big business. However, while FOSS has historically played a role outside of the mainstream of private software development, companies as large as Microsoft
have begun to develop official open source presences on the Internet. Corporations ranging from IBM, Oracle, Google and State Farm are just a few of the big names with a serious public stake in today's competitive open source
market signalling a shift in the corporate philosophy concerning the development of free to access software.
, written by Richard Stallman
and published by Free Software Foundation
(FSF), defines free software
as a matter of liberty, not price. The earliest known publication of the definition was in the February 1986 edition of the now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin publication of FSF. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project
website. As of April 2008, it is published there in 39 languages.
is used by the Open Source Initiative
to determine whether a software
license can be considered open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines
, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens
. Perens did not base his writing on the four freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation
, which were only widely available later.
was in a posting on 18 March 1998, just a month after the term open source itself was coined.
In February 2002, F/OSS appeared on a Usenet
newsgroup dedicated to Amiga
computer games
. In early 2002, MITRE
used the term FOSS in what would later be their 2003 report Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense
.
for free/libre/open source software. Later that year, the European Commission
(EC) used the phrase when they funded a study on the topic.
Unlike libre
software, which aimed to solve the ambiguity problem, FLOSS aimed to avoid taking sides in the debate over whether it was better to say "free software" or to say "open source software".
Proponents of the term point out that parts of the FLOSS acronym can be translated into other languages, with for example the F representing free (English) or frei (German), and the L representing libre (Spanish or French), livre (Portuguese), or libero (Italian), liber (Romanian) and so on. However, this term is not often used in official, non-English, documents, since the words in these languages for free as in freedom do not have the ambiguity problem of free in English.
By the end of 2004, the FLOSS acronym had been used in official English documents issued by South Africa, Spain, and Brazil.
The terms "FLOSS" and "FOSS" have come under some criticism for being counterproductive and sounding silly. For instance, Eric Raymond
, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has stated:
Raymond quotes programmer Rick Moen as stating
The primary obligation of users of traditional open source licenses such as BSD
is limited to appropriation that clearly identifies the copyright owner of the software. Such a license is focused on providing developers who wish to redistribute the software the greatest level flexibility. Users who do not wish to redistribute the software in any form are under no obligation. Developers can modify the software and redistribute it either as source or as part of a larger, possibly proprietary, derived work, provided the original appropriation is intact. These appropriations throughout the distribution chain ensure the owners' copyrights are maintained.
The primary obligation of users of free software licenses such as the GPL is to preserve the rights of other users under the terms of the license. Such a license is focused on ensuring that users' rights to access and modify the software cannot be denied by developers who redistribute the software. The only way to accomplish this is by restricting the rights of developers to include free software in larger, derived works unless those works share the same free software license. Free software uses copyright to enforce compliance with the software license. To strengthen its legal position, the Free Software Foundation asks developers to assign copyright to the Foundation when using the GPL license.
From a user's (non-distributor's) perspective, both free software and open source can be treated as effectively the same thing and referred to with the inclusive term FOSS. From a developer's (distributor's) perspective, free and open source software are distinct concepts with much different legal implications.
As author of the GCC compiler software, the FSF also exercised its copyright and changed the GCC license to GPLv3. As a user of GCC, and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, it is speculated that this change caused Apple, Inc. to switch the compiler in its Xcode
IDE from GCC to the open source Clang
compiler. The Samba
project also switched to the GPLv3 in a recent version of its free Windows-compatible network software. In this case, Apple replaced Samba with closed-source, proprietary software - a net loss for the FOSS movement as a whole.
Some of the most popular FOSS projects are owned by corporations that, unlike the FSF, use both patents and trademarks to enforce their rights. In August, 2010, Oracle
sued Google
claiming that its use of the open source Java infringed on Oracle's patents. Oracle acquired those patents with its acquisition of Sun Microsystems
in January, 2010. Sun had, itself, acquired MySQL
in 2008. This made Oracle the owner of the most popular proprietary database and the most popular open source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community. In response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community used MySQL's GPL license to fork the project into a new database outside of Oracle's control. This new database, however, will never be MySQL because Oracle owns the trademark for that term.
This new economy is already under development. In order to commercialize FOSS, many companies, Google being the most successful, are moving towards an economic model of advertising-supported software. In such a model, the only way to increase revenue is to make the advertising more valuable. Facebook
has recently come under fire for using novel user tracking methods to accomplish this.
This new economy is not without alternatives. Apple's App Stores have proven very popular with both users and developers. The Free Software Foundation considers Apple's App Stores to be incompatible with its GPL and complained that Apple was infringing on the GPL with its iTunes
terms of use. Rather than change those terms to comply with the GPL, Apple removed the GPL-licensed products from its App Stores. The authors of VLC
, one of the GPL-licensed programs at the center of those complaints, recently began the process to switch from the GPL to the LGPL.
, India, announced its official support for Free/Open Source Software in its State IT Policy of 2001, which was formulated after the first-ever Free Software Conference in India, "Freedom First!", held in July 2001 in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala..
The German City of Munich announced its intention to switch from Microsoft Windows-based operating systems to an open source implementation of SuSE Linux in March 2003, having achieved an adoption rate of 20% by 2010.
In 2004, a law in Venezuela
(Decree 3390) went into effect, mandating a two year transition to open source in all public agencies. As of June 2009 this ambitious transition is still under way. Malaysia launched the "Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Program", saving millions on proprietary software licences till 2008.
In 2005 the Government of Peru
voted to adopt open source across all its bodies. The 2002 response to Microsoft's critique is available online. In the preamble to the bill, the Peruvian government stressed that the choice was made to ensure that key pillars of democracy
were safeguarded: "The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law." In September, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announced its formal adoption of the OpenDocument standard for all Commonwealth entities.
In 2006, the Brazilian government has simultaneously encouraged the distribution of cheap computers running Linux throughout its poorer communities by subsidizing their purchase with tax breaks.
In April, Ecuador passed a similar law, Decree 1014, designed to migrate the public sector to Software Libre.
In February 2009, the United States
White House
moved its website to Linux servers using Drupal
for content management. In March, the French Gendarmerie Nationale announced it will totally switch to Ubuntu
by 2015.
In January 2010, the Government of Jordan announced that it has formed a partnership with Ingres Corporation, a leading open source database management company based in the United States that is now known as Actian Corporation, to promote the use of open source software starting with university systems in Jordan.
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
. This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporations.
In the context of free
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and open-source software
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
, free refers to the freedom to copy and re-use the software, rather than to the price of the software. The Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
, an organization that advocates the free software model, suggests that, to understand the concept, one should "think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer".
FOSS is an inclusive term that covers both free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and open source software, which despite describing similar development models, have differing cultures and philosophies. Free software focuses on the philosophical freedoms it gives to users, whereas open source software focuses on the perceived strengths of its peer-to-peer development model. FOSS is a term that can be used without particular bias towards either political approach.
Software which is both gratis
Gratis versus Libre
Gratis versus libre is the distinction between two meanings of the English adjective "free"; namely, "for zero price" and "with little or no restriction"...
and free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
may be called gratis/libre/open-source software (GLOSS).
Free software licence
Free software licence
A free software licence is a software licence which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law. A free software licence grants, to the recipients, freedoms in the form of permissions to modify or distribute copyrighted work...
s and open source licenses are used by many software packages. While the licenses themselves are in most cases the same, the two terms grew out of different philosophies and are often used to signify different distribution methodologies.
History
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the freedoms that are provided by free software. Software was commonly shared by individuals who used computers and most companies were so concerned with selling their hardware devices, they provided the software for free.Organizations of users and suppliers were formed to facilitate the exchange of software; see, for example, SHARESHARE (computing)
SHARE Inc. is a volunteer-run user group for IBM mainframe computers that was founded in 1955 by Los Angeles-area IBM 701 users. It evolved into a forum for exchanging technical information about programming languages, operating systems, database systems, and user experiences for enterprise users...
and DECUS
DECUS
The Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society was an independent computer user group related to Digital Equipment Corporation.The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community...
. By the late 1960s change was inevitable: software costs were dramatically increasing, a growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products (free in that the cost was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of "free" software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive. While some software might always be free, there would be a growing amount of software that was for sale only. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the software industry
Software industry
The software industry includes businesses involved in the development, maintenance and publication of computer software using any business model...
began using technical measures (such as only distributing binary copies
Executable
In computing, an executable file causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions," as opposed to a data file that must be parsed by a program to be meaningful. These instructions are traditionally machine code instructions for a physical CPU...
of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to study and customize software they had bought using reverse engineering
Reverse engineering
Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
techniques. In 1980 the copyright law (Pub. L. No. 96-517, 94 Stat. 3015, 3028) was extended to computer programs in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
In 1983, Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
(FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto
GNU Manifesto
The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman and published in March 1985 in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools as an explanation and definition of the goals of the GNU Project, and to call for participation and support. It is held in high regard within the free software movement as a...
. The manifesto also focused heavily on the philosophy of free software. He developed The Free Software Definition
The Free Software Definition
The Free Software Definition, written by Richard Stallman and published by Free Software Foundation , defines free software, as a matter of liberty, not price. The term "free" is used in the sense of "free speech," not of "free beer." The earliest known publication of the definition was in the...
and the concept of "copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
", designed to ensure software freedom for all.
The Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
, started by Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. The licence wasn't exactly a free software licence, but with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. Much like Unix, Torvalds' kernel attracted the attention of volunteer programmers.
In 1997, Eric Raymond
Eric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond , often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond was for a number of years frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement...
published The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design...
, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator
Netscape Communicator
Netscape Communicator was an Internet suite produced by Netscape Communications Corporation. Initially released in June 1997, Netscape Communicator 4.0 was the successor to Netscape Navigator 3.x and included more groupware features intended to appeal to enterprises.- Editions :Netscape...
Internet suite as free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
. This code is today better known as Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
and Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser...
.
Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring free software principles and benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the free software movement to emphasize the business potential of the sharing of source code. The new name they chose was "open source", and quickly Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens is a computer programmer and advocate in the open source community. He created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric S...
, publisher Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly is the founder of O'Reilly Media and a supporter of the free software and open source movements.-Life and career:...
, Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...
was founded in February 1998 to encourage use of the new term and evangelize open source principles.
While the Open Source Initiative
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...
sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, corporations found themselves increasingly threatened by the concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
. A Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
executive publicly stated in 2001 that "open source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business." This view perfectly summarizes the initial response to FOSS by the majority of big business. However, while FOSS has historically played a role outside of the mainstream of private software development, companies as large as Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
have begun to develop official open source presences on the Internet. Corporations ranging from IBM, Oracle, Google and State Farm are just a few of the big names with a serious public stake in today's competitive open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
market signalling a shift in the corporate philosophy concerning the development of free to access software.
Free software
The Free Software DefinitionThe Free Software Definition
The Free Software Definition, written by Richard Stallman and published by Free Software Foundation , defines free software, as a matter of liberty, not price. The term "free" is used in the sense of "free speech," not of "free beer." The earliest known publication of the definition was in the...
, written by Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
and published by Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
(FSF), defines free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
as a matter of liberty, not price. The earliest known publication of the definition was in the February 1986 edition of the now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin publication of FSF. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
website. As of April 2008, it is published there in 39 languages.
Open source
The Open Source DefinitionOpen Source Definition
The Open Source Definition is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether or not a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark....
is used by the Open Source Initiative
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...
to determine whether a software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
license can be considered open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines
Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian...
, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens is a computer programmer and advocate in the open source community. He created the Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric S...
. Perens did not base his writing on the four freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
, which were only widely available later.
FOSS
The first known use of the phrase free open source software on UsenetUsenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
was in a posting on 18 March 1998, just a month after the term open source itself was coined.
In February 2002, F/OSS appeared on a Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup dedicated to Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
computer games
Computer Games
"Computer Games" is a single by New Zealand group, Mi-Sex released in 1979 in Australia and New Zealand and in 1981 throughout Europe. It was the single that launched the band, and was hugely popular, particularly in Australia and New Zealand...
. In early 2002, MITRE
MITRE
The Mitre Corporation is a not-for-profit organization based in Bedford, Massachusetts and McLean, Virginia...
used the term FOSS in what would later be their 2003 report Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense
Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense
Use of Free and Open-Source Software in the U.S. Department of Defense is a 2003 report by The MITRE Corporation that documented widespread use of and reliance on free software within the United States Department of Defense . The report helped end a debate about whether FOSS should be banned from...
.
FLOSS
The acronym FLOSS was coined in 2001 by Rishab Aiyer GhoshRishab Aiyer Ghosh
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is an Indian journalist, computer scientist and Open-source software advocate. An Open Source Initiative board member, he is Founding International and Managing Editor of peer-reviewed journal First Monday, and Programme Leader of Free/Libre and Open Source Software at UNU-MERIT...
for free/libre/open source software. Later that year, the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
(EC) used the phrase when they funded a study on the topic.
Unlike libre
Gratis versus Libre
Gratis versus libre is the distinction between two meanings of the English adjective "free"; namely, "for zero price" and "with little or no restriction"...
software, which aimed to solve the ambiguity problem, FLOSS aimed to avoid taking sides in the debate over whether it was better to say "free software" or to say "open source software".
Proponents of the term point out that parts of the FLOSS acronym can be translated into other languages, with for example the F representing free (English) or frei (German), and the L representing libre (Spanish or French), livre (Portuguese), or libero (Italian), liber (Romanian) and so on. However, this term is not often used in official, non-English, documents, since the words in these languages for free as in freedom do not have the ambiguity problem of free in English.
By the end of 2004, the FLOSS acronym had been used in official English documents issued by South Africa, Spain, and Brazil.
The terms "FLOSS" and "FOSS" have come under some criticism for being counterproductive and sounding silly. For instance, Eric Raymond
Eric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond , often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond was for a number of years frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement...
, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has stated:
"Near as I can figure ... people think they’d be making an ideological commitment ... if they pick 'open source' or 'free software'. Well, speaking as the guy who promulgated 'open source' to abolish the colossal marketing blunders that were associated with the term 'free software', I think 'free software' is less bad than 'FLOSS'. Somebody, please, shoot this pitiful acronym through the head and put it out of our misery."
Raymond quotes programmer Rick Moen as stating
"I continue to find it difficult to take seriously anyone who adopts an excruciatingly bad, haplessly obscure acronym associated with dental hygiene aidsDental flossDental floss is made of either a bundle of thin nylon filaments or a plastic ribbon used to remove food and dental plaque from teeth. The floss is gently inserted between the teeth and scraped along the teeth sides, especially close to the gums. Dental floss may be flavored or unflavored, and...
" and "neither term can be understood without first understanding both free software and open source, as prerequisite study."
Dualism of FOSS
While the Open Source Initiative includes free software licenses as part of its broader category of approved open source licenses, the Free Software Foundation sees free software as distinct from open source. The key differences between the two are their approach to copyright and appropriation in the context of usage.The primary obligation of users of traditional open source licenses such as BSD
BSD licenses
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses. The original license was used for the Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix-like operating system after which it is named....
is limited to appropriation that clearly identifies the copyright owner of the software. Such a license is focused on providing developers who wish to redistribute the software the greatest level flexibility. Users who do not wish to redistribute the software in any form are under no obligation. Developers can modify the software and redistribute it either as source or as part of a larger, possibly proprietary, derived work, provided the original appropriation is intact. These appropriations throughout the distribution chain ensure the owners' copyrights are maintained.
The primary obligation of users of free software licenses such as the GPL is to preserve the rights of other users under the terms of the license. Such a license is focused on ensuring that users' rights to access and modify the software cannot be denied by developers who redistribute the software. The only way to accomplish this is by restricting the rights of developers to include free software in larger, derived works unless those works share the same free software license. Free software uses copyright to enforce compliance with the software license. To strengthen its legal position, the Free Software Foundation asks developers to assign copyright to the Foundation when using the GPL license.
From a user's (non-distributor's) perspective, both free software and open source can be treated as effectively the same thing and referred to with the inclusive term FOSS. From a developer's (distributor's) perspective, free and open source software are distinct concepts with much different legal implications.
Beyond copyright
While copyright is the primary legal mechanism that FOSS authors use to control usage and distribution of their software, other mechanisms such as legislation, patents, and trademarks have implications as well. In response to legal issues with patents and the DMCA, the Free Software Foundation released version 3 of its GNU Public License in 2007 that explicitly addressed the DMCA and patent rights.As author of the GCC compiler software, the FSF also exercised its copyright and changed the GCC license to GPLv3. As a user of GCC, and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, it is speculated that this change caused Apple, Inc. to switch the compiler in its Xcode
Xcode
Xcode is a suite of tools, developed by Apple, for developing software for Mac OS X and iOS. Xcode 4.2, the latest major version, is available on the Mac App Store for free for Mac OS X 10.7 , and on the Apple Developer Connection website for free to registered developers Xcode is a suite of tools,...
IDE from GCC to the open source Clang
Clang
Clang is a compiler front end for the C, C++, Objective-C, and Objective-C++ programming languages. It uses the Low Level Virtual Machine as its back end, and Clang has been part of LLVM releases since LLVM 2.6....
compiler. The Samba
Samba (software)
Samba is a free software re-implementation, originally developed by Andrew Tridgell, of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. As of version 3, Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain...
project also switched to the GPLv3 in a recent version of its free Windows-compatible network software. In this case, Apple replaced Samba with closed-source, proprietary software - a net loss for the FOSS movement as a whole.
Some of the most popular FOSS projects are owned by corporations that, unlike the FSF, use both patents and trademarks to enforce their rights. In August, 2010, Oracle
Oracle
In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....
sued Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
claiming that its use of the open source Java infringed on Oracle's patents. Oracle acquired those patents with its acquisition of Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
in January, 2010. Sun had, itself, acquired MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
in 2008. This made Oracle the owner of the most popular proprietary database and the most popular open source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community. In response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community used MySQL's GPL license to fork the project into a new database outside of Oracle's control. This new database, however, will never be MySQL because Oracle owns the trademark for that term.
Future economics of FOSS
According to Yochai Benkler, Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, free software is the most visible part of a new economy of commons-based peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. As examples, he cites a variety of FOSS projects, including both free software and open source.This new economy is already under development. In order to commercialize FOSS, many companies, Google being the most successful, are moving towards an economic model of advertising-supported software. In such a model, the only way to increase revenue is to make the advertising more valuable. Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
has recently come under fire for using novel user tracking methods to accomplish this.
This new economy is not without alternatives. Apple's App Stores have proven very popular with both users and developers. The Free Software Foundation considers Apple's App Stores to be incompatible with its GPL and complained that Apple was infringing on the GPL with its iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
terms of use. Rather than change those terms to comply with the GPL, Apple removed the GPL-licensed products from its App Stores. The authors of VLC
VLC media player
VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
, one of the GPL-licensed programs at the center of those complaints, recently began the process to switch from the GPL to the LGPL.
Adoption by governments
The Government of KeralaKerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
, India, announced its official support for Free/Open Source Software in its State IT Policy of 2001, which was formulated after the first-ever Free Software Conference in India, "Freedom First!", held in July 2001 in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala..
The German City of Munich announced its intention to switch from Microsoft Windows-based operating systems to an open source implementation of SuSE Linux in March 2003, having achieved an adoption rate of 20% by 2010.
In 2004, a law in Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
(Decree 3390) went into effect, mandating a two year transition to open source in all public agencies. As of June 2009 this ambitious transition is still under way. Malaysia launched the "Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Program", saving millions on proprietary software licences till 2008.
In 2005 the Government of Peru
Government of Peru
Peru is a presidential representative democratic republic with a multi-party system. Under the current constitution, the President is the head of state and government; he or she is elected for five years and cannot seek immediate re-election, he or she must stand down for at least one full...
voted to adopt open source across all its bodies. The 2002 response to Microsoft's critique is available online. In the preamble to the bill, the Peruvian government stressed that the choice was made to ensure that key pillars of democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
were safeguarded: "The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law." In September, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announced its formal adoption of the OpenDocument standard for all Commonwealth entities.
In 2006, the Brazilian government has simultaneously encouraged the distribution of cheap computers running Linux throughout its poorer communities by subsidizing their purchase with tax breaks.
In April, Ecuador passed a similar law, Decree 1014, designed to migrate the public sector to Software Libre.
In February 2009, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
moved its website to Linux servers using Drupal
Drupal
Drupal is a free and open-source content management system and content management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and...
for content management. In March, the French Gendarmerie Nationale announced it will totally switch to Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
by 2015.
In January 2010, the Government of Jordan announced that it has formed a partnership with Ingres Corporation, a leading open source database management company based in the United States that is now known as Actian Corporation, to promote the use of open source software starting with university systems in Jordan.
See also
- Alternative terms for free softwareAlternative terms for free softwareAlternative terms for free software have been a controversial issue among free software users from the late 1990s onwards. Coined in 1983 by Richard Stallman, "free software" is used to describe software which can be used, modified, and redistributed with little or no restriction...
- FLOSS ManualsFloss manualsThe FLOSS Manuals is a non-profit foundation founded in 2006 and based in the Netherlands. The foundation is focused on the creation of quality documentation about how to use free software....
- FLOSS WeeklyFLOSS WeeklyFLOSS Weekly is a free software / open source themed podcast from the TWiT Network. The show premiered on April 7, 2006, and features prominent guests from the free software/open source community. It was originally hosted by Leo Laporte; his cohost for the first seventeen episodes was Chris DiBona...
– a weekly podcast started by Leo LaporteLeo LaporteLéo Gordon Laporte is an Emmy Award winning, American technology broadcaster, author, and entrepreneur. A former resident of Providence, Rhode Island, he now lives in Petaluma, California with his wife Jennifer and two children, Abby and Henry....
, now hosted by Randal Schwartz - Free software communityFree software communityThe free-software community is an informal term that refers to the users and developers of free software as well as supporters of the free-software movement. The movement is sometimes referred to as the open-source software community or a subset thereof...
- Free Software FoundationFree Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
- Graphics hardware and FOSS
- Hacker culture
- List of free and open source software packages
- Outline of free software
- Reverse Engineering - Binary software techniques
- Software warsSoftware warsSoftware wars describes a state where software authors and users argue over which software is best for a purpose and should thus be used by everyone for that task....
External links
- FOSSBazaar – community for free and open source software governance
- FLOSSworld – Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Worldwide impact study
- Free / Open Source Research Community (mit.edu)
- FreeOpenSourceSoftware.org – Wiki on FOSS history, organizations, licenses, people, software.
- International Free and Open Source Software Foundation