news
(Part I) So Open, Yet So Overlooked: A Dive into the World of FOSS
In response to the increasing restrictions, Richard Stallman launched the GNU Project and the associated GPL license to develop free software – a replacement for the UNIX operating system. This led to the inception of the Free Software Movement (“FSM”) where free is to be understood as “free as in free speech, not free beer” – free in the sense of libre (liberty, freedom), not gratis (price). He led the “ideological movement” to make source code freely available and accessible, providing four essential freedoms, but on the pre-condition that access to the derivatives will not be restricted. In 1998, a group of developers, including Eric Raymond, coined the term “open source” which eventually gained widespread adoption. While the two stand for accessibility of software, it is the underpinned values which differentiate free software from open (Stallman made a point to distinguish FSM from the open source movement).
At this juncture, one must not conflate free software, open-source software, and public software. The first two, though overlapping in scope, are distinguishable on the basis of their underlying philosophies. FS places emphasis on its commitment to user freedom, whereas the open source movement focuses on the practical and developmental aspects of software. Both are distributed under specific licenses that the user must comply with while on the flip side, the public domain software imposes no such obligations (here). Nowadays, the FS and OSS are used interchangeably and this piece adopts the umbrella term Free Open Source Software (“FOSS”) to encompass both the movements.