Re: Wikipedia to merge Free Software and Open Source

On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 07:56:34PM +0100, Ian Lynch wrote:

> On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 18:27 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > Noah Slater wrote:
> > > You could develop some software in total secrecy and occasionally publish the
> > > code with a GPL licence. This would be Free Software but to call it Open Source
> > > would be a mistake because it does not follow an open development methodology.
> > 
> > Netscape was "open source" the moment they released the code; that was 
> > like the first the big open source win.
> > 
> > The development methodology is an adjunct. I agree that the open source 
> > attitude, if there is one, is that "it's better to develop code in large 
> > groups", and to do that you need a suitable licensing environment. But 
> > whether or not something is "open source" is nothing to do with how it's 
> > developed.
> 
> And you could have open source code but a restrictive license for using
> it.

As far as I see it Free Software is a subset of Open Source.  It can't
be free (in the sense of freedom) unless the source is open, but it is
possible for the source to be open but not free (because of restrictive
licences).

I agree with Alex that the development methodologies used are orthogonal
to the distinction.  There are open source projects where the
development is done "in secret" and releases occur when the developer(s)
think it's ready (most of mine are like that), and free software
projects where everything is open and anyone can make changes at any
time.  I suspect that most of both are somewhere in the middle.

Chris C