On 09/30/2015 07:37 AM, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote: /snip/
The letter of the law my dear Shylock, the letter. But in spirit, Open Source and Free Software couldn't be more different. The one is about a more efficient software production model, the other about the user's rights. But such "spirit" things are difficult to grasp at times :-) In practice, and technically, most Open Source software is Free, and all Free Software is Open Source. But watch those folks in a corporate environment awkwardly avoiding the F word -- or read Bruce Perens, one of those who coined Open Source writing that in hindsight it may have been a mistake to realize that the people behind those flavors are quite different.
This whole (OT) discussion perverts the meaning of the word "free."* In common usage, the word "free" means you do not have to pay money for it. Therefore, the example given above is incorrect: all free software is NOT open source: Firefox and Thunderbird are prime examples of free software which is not open source that probably most users of Linux are using today. They[re _free_ becasue you didn't have to pay for it. simple as that. --doug * The American Heritage Dictionary shows "free" first in regard to slavery, or arrest, etc. It goes on to discuss politics and free vs. dictatorship. It eventually gets to "costing nothing; gratuitous: _a free pass." All of these are certainly in common usage, but the idea of "free" applying to software that one may share seems to be unique to some Linux users. If you were to ask the average American what his first definition of "free" would be, I would bet that he'd say, "You don't have to pay for it."