Alternative terms for free software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From the early 90s onward, alternative terms for free software have come into common use, with much debate in the free software community. The term "free software" was coined by Richard Stallman in 1983 when he launched the free software movement. Records of published version of the its definition can be found dating back to January 1989. The definition can be summarised as software which the user can use for any purpose, study the source code of, adapt to their needs, and redistribute - modified or unmodified.^[1] To avoid the ambiguity of the English word "free", and to avoid talking about the impact on freedom of non-free software, people have suggested alternative names.

"Open-source software", "Software Libre", "FLOSS" (Free/Libre/Open-Source Software), and "FOSS" (Free and Open-Source Software) are the most common alternative terms.^[2] The most popular of these has been "open-source software".^[2]

Users of each of these terms share almost identical license criteria and development practices, but differ, according to Richard Stallman, in the respective philosophical values. Some people use "libre" to avoid the ambiguity of the word "free". However, these terms are mostly used within the free software movement and are slowly spreading. Stallman endorses the terms FLOSS and FOSS to refer to "open source" and "free software" without necessarily choosing between the two camps, but he asks people to consider supporting the "free software" camp.

1 History
2 Minor terms
3 Non-English terms used in some English speaking regions
4 Ownership and attachments
5 Licences
6 See also
7 External links
- 7.1 Wikibooks
8 References

[edit] History

"Open-source software" was proposed in 1998 as a replacement label for "free software". Later that year, Open Source Initiative was founded to promote the term as part of "a marketing program for free software".[2]

"Libre software" was first used publicly in 2000, by the European Commission.[3] The word "libre", borrowed from the Spanish and French languages, does not have the freedom/cost ambiguity problem that "free" does.

"FLOSS" was used in 2001 as a project acronym by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh as an acronym for Free/Libre/Open-Source Software. Later that year, the European Commission (EC) used the phrase when they funded a study on the topic.[4] "FOSS" has since been used by others with the same meaning. The term FOSS was first formally introduced in the document, Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense.

The term "open source software" was picked during a strategy session held in Palo Alto. Those present included Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, John Hall, Sam Ockman, Christine Peterson, and Eric S. Raymond. The session was arranged in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator (as Mozilla). It aimed to ease business adoption of free software by getting rid of the zero-cost ambiguity, and to "avoid the political connotations of 'free software'".[5]

Unlike "libre software", which aimed to solve an 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". The L for "libre" was included in the hope that it would clarify that the word "free" referred to freedom, not price.

Proponents of the term point out that parts of the FLOSS acronym can be translated into other European 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). 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 English's "free".

By the end of 2004, the FLOSS acronym had been used in official English documents issued by South Africa, Spain[6], and Brazil[7].

[edit] Minor terms

At roughly the time the article introducing "FOSS" was being written, the similar term "F/OSS" appeared on a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to Amiga computer games .[8] Another abbreviation is OSS/FS, although this hasn't seen much usage outside of the documents of David A. Wheeler.

A variation on FOSS, Free/Open Source Software/Code (FOSSC), is a less notable term used by a software programmer based in New Delhi, India.[9]

Richard Stallman has suggested that the term "unfettered software" would be an appropriate, non-ambiguous replacement, but that he would not push for it because there was too much momentum, and too much effort, behind the term "free software".

[edit] Non-English terms used in some English speaking regions

The free software community in India sometimes uses the term "swatantra software", despite English being the lingua franca. This term, meaning freedom, comes from Hindi but is also understandable to speakers of other Indian languages, as they all have common roots in Sanskrit.

In The Philippines, "malayang software" is sometimes used. The word "libre" exists in the Filipino language, and it came from the Spanish language, but "libre" acquired the same ambiguity of the English word "free".

[edit] Ownership and attachments

None of these terms, or the term "free software" itself, have been trademarked. Bruce Perens of OSI, attempted to register "open source" as a service mark for OSI in the United States of America, but that attempt failed to meet the relevant trademark standards. OSI claims a trademark on "OSI Certified", and applied for trademark registration, but did not complete the paperwork. The United States Patent and Trademark Office labels it as "abandoned". [10]

While the term "free software" is associated with FSF's definition, and the term "open-source software" is associated with OSI's definition, the other terms have not been claimed by any group in particular. This, however, has not led to confusion since the definitions published by FSF and OSI are practically the same.

All of the terms mentioned here can be used interchangeably, the choice of which to use is mostly political (wanting to support a certain group) or practical (thinking that one term is the clearest).

[edit] Licences

Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative both publish lists of licences that they find to comply with their definition of free software and open-source software respectively. Apart from these two organisations, the Debian project is seen by some to provide useful advice on whether particular licenses comply with their Debian Free Software Guidelines. Debian doesn't publish a list of approved licenses, so its judgements have to be tracked by checking what software they have allowed into their software archives.

Most software packages that fall under the names used in this article are under a small set of licenses. 50-75% is under the GNU General Public License, and most of the rest are distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, the BSD License, the Mozilla Public License, the MIT License, and the Apache License.

There is also a class of software that is covered by the names discussed in this article, but which doesn't have a license: software for which the source code is in the public domain. The use of such source code, and therefore the executable version, is not restricted by copyright and therefore does not need a license to grant the rights to use, study, modify, and redistribute.