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.

"...Free software is a political movement that is not only about producing software that’s source code is ‘open’, but it’s vision is a free society & free software. The term OSS gives too much emphasis to the source code being available, and not enough emphasis to freedom.

"...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..."

Open-source software is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available. Although open-source software is also called "free software" (see www.fsf.org and www.opensource.org), it is far from free. There are specific licensing agreements that are applicable to such code, which specify the responsibilities of the user of the code.

“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...» --

"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.

In our earlier article, "Facts and Friction on Open Source and Free Software" we have explained where "Open Source" is coming from and what is its relation to Free Software and the Free Software Foundation that represents it.

At this point, the only reason i still use the term "Free Software" is to align myself with the Free Software movement as opposed to the Open Source movement, but to end this stupid naming controversy and make both movements stronger, not only do we have to, but we should for our own benefit use the term "open source" instead. I did a little rant about this a while ago on YouTube.

In recent weeks I have banged on about Open Source, expending two articles on Firefox alone. Open Source applications make their code available to everyone. Disagreements and rabid balkanisation within the Open Source community aside, for our purposes the term might as well refer to free software whose licence allows you to share the source code, alter it, use it, do with it what you will.