[OT] What is Open Source? (was Re: ANN: Twisted 0.16.0...)

Huaiyu Zhu huaiyu at gauss.almadan.ibm.com
Fri Apr 12 20:50:07 EDT 2002


Brad Bollenbach <bbollenbach at shaw.ca> wrote:
>In article <slrnabeqkg.mfc.huaiyu at gauss.almadan.ibm.com>, Huaiyu Zhu wrote:
>> Brad Bollenbach <bbollenbach at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>This is a semantic debate. I know that Stallman chose the term "Free
>>>Software" because he felt it was the best (and most concise) way to
>>>express what he was thinking of.
>> 
>> That's right.  A large portion of OSS is FS.  But another large 
>> portion is  not.  FS is a proper subset of OSS.
>
>Fine, I guess I'll have to cite Stallman directly to back up what I
>said. :) From http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/categories.html#OpenSource:
>
><begin gnu>
>Open Source software
>====================
>
> The term ``open source'' software is used by some people to mean more
> or less the same thing as free software. We prefer the term ``free
> software''; follow that link to see the reasons.
><end gnu>

So RMS says using "open source" to mean "free" is not what FSF prefers, even
though many people use it that way.  It is definitely not what OSI prefers,
either.  Why use it that way?

Using two terms to mean the same concept when we do have two distinct
concepts to name leaves us one term short.  What name do you propose for the
broader concept of "open source" as defined by OSI?

Names are precious commodity in today's world.

Huaiyu



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