Free Versus Open Source

So, if Free Software is “free as in speech,” what’s Open Source Software? If you’re interested, you might want to do a bit more investigation, looking at the difference between the Free Software Foundation’s statement and the Open Source Initiative’s statement, but in short: Open Source Software cannot cost money. There’s some important other distinctions involving how easily available the source code must be, but Open Source Software’s main difference is that the people making it cannot be doing it as their living. All Open Source Software is Free, but not all Free Software is Open Source

For what might seem to be such a small distinction, there’s been a pretty major schism between the two camps. Richard Stallman has very strong views that the Open Source Movement is distracting everyone from the real issue of free-ness, and has written a number of very intense statements to that effect. If you’re curious, my favorite is here, but for less biased takes on the differences between the two movements, you can take a look here, here, and here. The Free Software Movement’s main problem is that it has been marginalized by the growing Open Source Community. While there certainly are a number of successful Free projects, there are far more successful Open Source projects, that continue to get more and more attention.

Further, the distinction between Free and Open Source isn’t commonly understood or paid attention to. Many people, including professionals, use the two terms interchangeably; the term FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is a catch-all referring to all such software. Unless you’re specifically looking at the licenses, the two ideologies are similar enough that most people just don’t care. This is a big source of Stallman’s anger, as he views them as extremely different and the distinction is one that should be made.

Today, though, it just isn’t as relevant. There are a number of for-profit companies, like Apache or Red Hat, that support and create Open Source projects, with either premium versions of their services for sale or support you need to pay for. Despite Stallman’s efforts and rhetoric, there’s businesses built around Open Source and it functions very similar to free Software.

Free Software History

The Free Software Movement was born from Richard Stallman’s mind in September, 1983. Stallman was, at the time, working at MIT, and becoming increasingly frustrated with proprietary software. In earlier days, he could look at any and all the code from programs he or friends were using, modifying it or sharing it as he wished. Increasingly, this stopped being the case. Code became proprietary; you had the rights to use it, but you couldn’t modify it or read it. Stallman, decided that this was untenable and quit his position at MIT so as to avoid working in a system where software wasn’t freely available.

Stallman created the GNU Project, with the goal of creating a “free” operating system, which anyone could look at, share, and modify. Stallman charged for the software he created, sending out cd-roms with the code to paying customers. Stallman created a number of pieces of software over the next five years, but never actually made the kernal that he would need to make a true operating system.

Cut to 1991, when Linus Torvalds created the Linux operating system (or GNU/Linux, depending on who you ask. There’s some controversy over the name, as Stallman claims that just calling the operating system Linux diminishes the importance of GNU’s contributions). As time has gone by, there’s been more adoption of Free Software, but the Free Software movement as a whole now lives in the shadow of the much larger Open Source Software Movement. The license that Linux ends up adopting is an Open License rather than a Free one, and the community as a whole has been much more engaged and supportive of Open Source projects. Both movements are certainly alive and well, but there’s a great degree of controversy over the differences in ideology.

 

Free Software Movement

What does it mean to buy software? If you buy a wrench, or food, or any physical product, you have a sense of ownership. You can use the wrench, give it to someone else, melt it down and reforge it, or do whatever you want. If you buy food, you can eat it, use it to make modern art, or set it on fire. If you buy software though, you generally can’t do those things. You don’t really own the software; you own a license to use the software for very limited things. You generally can’t modify or even look at the underlying code, you can’t share the software with other people, and you definitely can’t sell the software again.

Free Software is software that behaves like a physical product. Once you buy it, you own it; you can use the program however you want, look at the code, modify it, and give it away to other people. Free Software isn’t necessarily “free as in beer,” because you can charge people money to get it, but it is “free as in speech,” because you can use and share it as you want. The Free Software Movement has seen its share of controversy, colorful characters, and constructive creations. If you’re curious about any of those, click the links below.

This is a group project for the Free Culture and Open Access class of 2014 at NYU, under Professor Howard Besser. Our Group is composed of Heather Martini and Neil Kosslyn.

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