Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

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Like you mentioned in your article, this indeed seems to be Bruce Perens' opinion. However, notice how both Eric Raymond (on the side of open source) and Richard Stallman (on the side of free software) disagree with him.

If you listen to people like Eric Raymond, open source is all about quality. "Many eyes make all bugs shallow", etc.

If you listen to people like Richard Stallman, free software is all about users' rights: in some cases free software may be of higher quality than comparable proprietary software, but that's just a welcome side-effect -- what matters is that it respects users' rights. In this view, free software would be worthwhile even if it was technically inferior to contemporary proprietary software.

Or to put it another way: if Eric Raymond one days wakes up convinced that Open Source is technically inferior, he must drop it in order to remain consistent with his own justifications. If Richard Stallman one day wakes up convinced Free Software is technically inferior, he will remain committed to it, since technical quality was never his primary goal.

I'd say that's a pretty big philosophical difference!

> If you listen to people like Eric Raymond, open source is all about quality. "Many eyes make all bugs shallow", etc.

I'm not a fan of ESR at all (he's a bit of a paranoid nutcase), but you are taking that way out of context here.

The "given enough eyeballs" quote was about project leadership styles not software licensing. It was about empowering and accepting many contributors into a project (the bazaar) instead of having a small clique in charge of a project (the cathedral).

> Or to put it another way: if Eric Raymond one days wakes up convinced that Open Source is technically inferior, he must drop it in order to remain consistent with his own justifications.

ESR thought that attracting large contributor bases to projects was the key to improving quality. Not that Open Source automatically means better quality.

Yes, I'm very well that they refer to philosophical differences. But they are both talking about the same damn software. Not the same philosophy, but the same software. This is something everyone agrees about, not just Bruce Perens. This is also the official position of OSI, not just Bruce Perens': that open source is just another name for free software.

That is not true, because every free software is open source, but not every open source software is free. (this is me oversimplifying to make a point)

It's not that simple. Open source implies the source is out there for anyone to study. Free software is not necessarily free of charge and readily available.

Nothing prevents you from paywalling a GPL program as long as you distribute sources to legitimate users on request. Free as in freedom, not as in beer.

Open source as formally defined by the OSI is also not necessarily free of charge and readily available to everyone. The GPL of course is an open source license, some revisionist tendencies to use "open source" to refer only to non-GPL-family licenses notwithstanding.

I had never looked up the OSI definition[0], but you are of course entirely correct. So the difference between free and open source software is the "four freedoms", which I think we all knew to begin with.. :)

0: https://opensource.org/osd

The OSI definition includes the four freedoms, just stated in different ways:

"The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose" - "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor."

"The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish" - "The program must include source code (...) The license must allow modifications and derived works"

"The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor" - "The program (...) must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form."

"The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others" - "The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software."

That's why almost all software considered "open source" is also "free software" and vice-versa.

What example do you have in mind of open source software that is not free software? I suspect you might have a (very common) misunderstanding of what each term means.

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...

"Under pressure from the movie and record companies, software for individuals to use is increasingly designed specifically to restrict them. This malicious feature....is the antithesis in spirit of the freedom that free software aims to provide. And not just in spirit: since the goal of DRM is to trample your freedom, DRM developers try to make it hard, impossible, or even illegal for you to change the software that implements the DRM.

Yet some open source supporters have proposed “open source DRM” software. Their idea is that, by publishing the source code of programs designed to restrict your access to encrypted media and by allowing others to change it, they will produce more powerful and reliable software for restricting users like you. The software would then be delivered to you in devices that do not allow you to change it.

This software might be open source and use the open source development model, but it won't be free software since it won't respect the freedom of the users that actually run it."

With respect to actual determinations of acceptability of licenses based on official criteria by FSF and OSI, there are some licenses that are FSF-free that have not been OSI-approved (though possibly in all such cases no meaning should be attached to the failure to approve since it simply reflects that the license was not submitted for approval), and, as I think someone pointed out, some OSI-approved licenses that have specifically been said by the FSF to be nonfree. It seems unlikely to me that the current OSI (disclosure: I'm currently a board member) would be inclined to reach a conclusion that is in conflict with a conclusion reached by the FSF as to license acceptability.

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