Re: Open source - Free software



On Tue, 2006-09-26 at 21:35 -0700, v4vijayakumar wrote:
I have been using "open source" and "free software" products for some
time. I want to contribute to them but I couldn't decide between "open
source" and "free software". I would support "open source" at this
level, because we can see what it is doing. I don't know how many of us
can really see the things, but we have some issues in using "free
software". Consider a "free software" web client (browser), it would
comfortably send the confidential info to the person who programmed it
that way.

Expecting replies this way.
x : y

Where,

x is either "Open source" or "Free software", without quotes

y is a statement which supports x to be chosen and it can not be more
than 80 characters in length and, 1 line in height

I hope to get all the replies this way. No fun intended. :)

Let me see if I can get this right :)

Both : Use open source methods to develop free software.

Further explanation:
In that way you will create both free and open source software. Free
software is more about ideology while open source is about business
strategy. Free software focuses on protecting the user's rights and IMHO
all software companies should develop free software. Open source
software is more about creating a quality product in a fast and
efficient way and IMHO this is the best way to develop software.

These two movements differ in their approach to achieve the same goal:
Quality.

Free software looks at software from the user's point of view.
Open source software looks at software from the practical point of view.

You develop free software by choosing the correct license (e.g. GPL) and
you develop open source software by opening up the development to
everybody.

/Tryggvi


.



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