Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Free and open source software comparsion

So what differs open source software from free software. Open source software is basically same than free software. The difference comes from restrictions in licencing. Free software is totaly free for distribution, copy, modify etc. Open source has it's restrictions in modify and redistributions and accepts more restrictive licences than free software and doesn't accept some free software licences. But more or less the differences are small and almoust all open source is free software and nearly all free software is open source.

Ambiguity of the word free software has raised many questions. Many people have tried to find proper definition to free and open source software and there comes the different understanding of these two schools of thought. Free software developers think that open source software is more meant for corporations. Companies fear the word free, for them it usually means it's buggy and not working and not effiecent and profitable. They tend to go for open source which is more built for business. They think that with open source they can get better quality, because its vendor locked-in type of software. Free software developers think that many software developing companies are using "open source" termin with their PR tricks to sell their software more easily. Some people think that free software thinking is like communist thinking, they tend to see collectivic thinking and problems with no ownership is allowed, but more people think it is liberal movement and is very good for economy.

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