Open Source
From LDSOSS
The official Open Source Definition was derived from The Debian Free Software Guidelines. It consists of the following principles:
- Free Redistribution
- Source Code
- Derived Works
- Integrity of The Author's Source Code
- No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
- No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
- Distribution of License
- License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
- License Must Not Restrict Other Software
- License Must Be Technology-Neutral
Terminology Perspectives
While Open Source is currently more dominant than the original term Free Software, or the more recent development Libre Software, it is often criticized for its original purpose which was to distance itself from the strong philosophy behind the term Free Software.
"On February 3rd 1998, in the wake of Netscapes announcement to release their browser as Free Software, a group of people met in Palo Alto in the Silicon Valley and proposed to start a marketing campaign for Free Software using the term 'Open Source.' The goal was to seek fast commercialization of Free Software and acceptance of Free Software by the companies and venture capitalists of the booming new economy. As a means to this end, they made a conscious decision to leave aside all long-term issues (such as philosophy, ethics and social effects) related to Free Software, feeling these posed obstacles in the way of rapid acceptance by economy. They proposed to focus on technical advantages only.
Often used in good faith by people who refer to what Free Software stands for, the term 'Open Source' - originally defined to mean the same thing as Free Software in terms of licenses and implementation - has seen inflationary usage. Nowadays, it is regularly used for everything between Free Software and the highly proprietary 'Governmental Security Program' (GSP) by Microsoft.
For more information about the issue, please also see the 'We speak about Free Software' campaign" (http://www.fsfeurope.org/documents/freesoftware.en.html).