Designation Open Source ( open source French ) applies to the Logiciel S whose license respects criteria precisely establish by the Open Source Initiative, i.e. the possibility of free redistribution, access to the Source code, and of derived work.

One often qualifies a Free software of Open Source , because the compatible licenses Open Source include the free licenses according to the definition of FSF.

The term Open Source is in competition with the term Free Software recommended by FSF.

History

The use of designation Open Source was suggested by Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute in order to raise the ambiguity of the English word Free Software which means free within the meaning of “freedom” but especially “free”, and thus recalling the users whom a software has a cost. It was also a question of choosing a vocabulary corresponding better to the business world, the term Free (free) of Free Software generally being likely to worry the companies.

The introduction of designation Open Source did nothing but add one new ambiguity, because this designation was diverted direction envisaged, and was applied to software respecting only the second criterion, the availability of the source code. Eric Steven Raymond had initially tried to deposit Open Source . Its attempt having failed, it created with Bruce Perens the Open Source Initiative, which delivers the label OSI approved with the licenses which satisfy the criteria defined in the Open Source Definition, an adaptation of the Free Software Guidelines of the project Debian.

Distinction

The formal difference between Open Source and Free Software almost does not have a consequence in the evaluation of the licenses. One could a time to quote a counterexample famous with the project Darwin of Apple which was Open Source according to the OSI, but not Free Software within the meaning of the Fondation for the free software. Since version 2.0 of APSL, the license under which it is distributed, it is not any more the case. Today, a typical partisan of the free software would be well in evil to quote an important project which is Open Source but not Free Software or reciprocally.

Designations Free Software and Open Source are actually two concurrent designations for the same type of license of software. By using designation Free Software , one makes a point of proposing the philosophical and political purpose of the license, while designation Open Source stresses the method of development and diffusion of the software. The raised history and polemics are in the article Open Source Initiative.

From an economic point of view, the mark Open Source contributed to the creation of a new form of market and economy. It was a question of providing a more pragmatic approach of the advantages of the free software, by putting side the connotations political and philosophical, in order to preserve only the advantages of them in the field of engineering. The development of this market is carried by the traditional companies of data processing (software firm) but also by specialized services companies: SSL (service companies in free software).

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • Open Source Initiative (OSI)
  • Free Software Foundation (FSF)
  • Framasoft, a site dedicated to the free software for the general public and education
  • NovaForge.org, a guide of Open Source for the companies and the administrations
  • Free software: definition and historical
  • Definition of Open Source by Bruce Perens
  • Why “Free Software” is it better than “Open Source” by Richard Stallman
  • Open Source Developement with CVS (Mr. Bar & K. Fogel)
  • Open Source Software List
  • open News source, blog presenting news and tutoriels on many open software source

Simple: Open source

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