open source

It is not enough to have Richard Stallman travel around the world endlessly giving standard Free Software speeches among other things repeating how Open Source is not the same thing as Free Software and how the operating system widely known as "Linux" is actually "GNU/Linux" (because GNU project in fact started that OS). It is not even enough to have Free Software supporters constantly keep pointing these things out and arguing why they believe so.

In my previous article I argued that the Open Source Initiative, founded as a reaction to the perceived unwillingness or ineffectiveness of the FSF to attract businesses to Free Software, was a bad solution because it was based on hiding of the most important part of what makes Free Software what it is, the user freedom. It emphasized business friendly aspects of Free Software at the expense of rather than in addition to its underlying political aspect - one largely based on bringing social and economic justice back to the software world.

Due to the increased diffusion of "Open Source" as a term this article suggests its gradual phase out in favor of the original "Free Software" term and renaming of the "Open Source Initiative" into "Free Software Business Initiative" (no matter how controversial the proposal may be).

There are three ways we could look at Microsoft's recent approaches to the "Open Source" phenomenon.

• 1. They are in a process towards genuinely embracing Free Software or Open Source.
• 2. They are pretending to be embracing it while trying to diffuse and weaken its image.

In our earlier article, "Facts and Friction on Open Source and Free Software" we have explained where "Open Source" is coming from and what is its relation to Free Software and the Free Software Foundation that represents it. One of the points made was that the term Open Source deliberately de-emphasized a certain aspect of what defines Free Software as originally specified by the FSF in order to make Free Software, albeit under the new term, better appeal to the business world.

A lot of the criticism to the new term came, obviously, from the Free Software Foundation and the movement that aligns with it, as they believed (and continue to believe) it is wrong to hide one of the most important things that make Free Software what it is, the freedom that goes with it and which is the sole reason for which the Free Software movement started. They also say that the term, despite there being an Open Source Definition, would in minds of many simply mean the availability of the source code and not much more than that.

When generally talking about our community and software it builds and promotes, we use various differing terms and acronyms; "Free Software", "Open Source", "Linux", "GNU/Linux", "FOSS", "FLOSS" etc. To outsiders this may seem counterproductive because it confuses people, but in such an open and diverse community ecosystem this shouldn't come as a surprise. Various people hold various perspectives and hence form various views on issues that concern them. Some sort of a polarization is almost inevitable.

In our community this polarization is between people who promote the "Open Source" label and those who promote the "Free Software" label. The difference between views of these two "camps", as we often call them, is more in the way they prioritize certain issues than anything else. Motivations for supporting either of the labels can differ, but they usually come down to that fundamental difference.