What's the difference between free software and open source software

Juergen R. <amerigo@ny.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 07:25:58 GMT, "Ed Murphy" <emurphy42@socal.rr.com>
> wrote:
> >"Free software" generally refers to Richard Stallman's idealistic
> >philosophy that proprietary software should be boycotted on principle,
> >even if it happens to be better in a specific instance.

> It remains a mystery why such a "philosophy" should apply to software

No, it does not remain, not being a "mystery". Kindly don't make such
sentences up - they're annoying. When did YOU stop beating your wife?

> and not, for example, to electronic hardware. If the answer were that

It applies to software because software is like paper - it's an
artistic medium. You can change it at will. Refusing the means to
change something which is as malleable as that is to RMS as
bigbrotherish as anything can get, and I agree. It's a restriction on
your personal freedoms of intolerable dimensions to say "you're not
going to do that". Think back to the original printer filter at MIT
that started this off.

> the one is a material object and the other not, then the next question

Almost. The materialism is not the problem. It's the malleability.

> would be why the same principles don't apply (or do they?) to other
> products of the intellect and the imagination, and to the services of,

Because they do apply. You are at liberty to see the source code of
"treasure island", for example. It just so happens to be the same as
the object code.

> for example, lawyers, bankers, doctors etc.

Because those people do not produce an artistic form that you are
generally likely to want to adapt to your own purposes and tastes.
Nevertheless, there are such things as open source licenses for legal
documents. I direct you to google and various open source pages for
more info.

Peter

In <bokj5h$rlp$1@news.yaako.com>, on 11/09/2003
at 01:24 PM, "Alex Li" <alexli@icil.net> said:

>What's their relationship?

The terms have no formal meanings. The best thing to do is to refer to
specific licenses, e.g., GPL, which are well defined.

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On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 08:39:19 +0000, Jürgen R. wrote:

> The obvious problem with the "open source" model is the difficulty and
> expense of providing efficient support and documentation.

Plenty of closed-source systems have lousy support and documentation.

If you work in the IT department, or as a consultant, then source code
often *is* efficient support and documentation. You don't have to rely
on what the software is said to do (by a manual written by an infinite
number of monkeys), or what it appears to do (based on your own end-user
testing); you can damn well find out exactly what it actually does.

I had this come up in my professional consulting, just a few weeks
ago. We were working with custom code written by someone else (we're
not yet to the point of writing our own custom code for this particular
package), and while testing it, I thought "hmm, there seems to be an
off-by-one error". Fortunately, the someone else included his source
code; I don't know the system well enough to write it, but I know
enough to read it, and so it only took me about 15 minutes to figure
out exactly what part of our spec he had misunderstood. (And another
15 minutes to phone him up, explain it, and make triply sure he was
clear on it this time around. He was; the problem was corrected in
the next build.)

In article <0apmob.524.ln@news.it.uc3m.es>, P.T. Breuer wrote:
> Juergen R. <amerigo@ny.com> wrote:
>
>> would be why the same principles don't apply (or do they?) to other
>> products of the intellect and the imagination, and to the services of,
>
> Because they do apply. You are at liberty to see the source code of
> "treasure island", for example. It just so happens to be the same as
> the object code.

There exists a distinction of "functional information" from "artistic
expression" too, however fuzzy it may be, based on utility. Source code
and recipes are functional information, and should be handled and
distributed most freely. Technical manuals and other documentation are
functional, but a bit less so. Novels and poetry are least functional, and
may be given more restrictive copyright status.

--
Juha Siltala
http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/people/jsiltala/