Free vs Open Source Software
By ajitsabnis on Jul 14, 2006
Excellent collection of information around Free Software (and hence initiation into Open Source Software). Why "free" software? Why copyright doesn't work or apply to software? Why copying software is not same as copying from book?
Open Source is a development methodology, free software is a social movement.
For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.
We disagree on the basic principles, but agree more or less on the practical recommendations.
Free software is not the software that you can get for zero price.
Free software is the software that gives user certain freedoms.
Consider "free" to be as in "Free speech, not free beer".
Open source software (OSS) is the one whose source code you can look at.
OSS means that anyone can get copies of its source code files.
Free software is OSS, but reverse is not necessarily true!
OSS follows "Live and let license".
Read it for the man behind FSF, GNU.
Historical information is pretty good.
Open Source Softwarehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
Eric Raymond was OSI chief.
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
"The Cathedral and the Bazaar" relate to styles of projects:
- Cathedral => Releases contain source code, but development may happen internally or in controlled fashion
- Bazaar => Releases contain source code, and development happens in full public (Internet) view
What is minimal required from a new OSS project?
[But, the problems we're solving are not for techies, our solutions are for non-technical people. How OSS helps such people?]
What management has to offer to OSS?
Eric Raymond on OSS vs FSF. Good history. Use of terms "market share", "mind share".
Critique of The Cathedral and the Bazaar.