>FLOSS made the internet possible.
FTFA! In all seriousness though; there isn't an aspect of computing that hasn't been improved by F(L)OSS. (What's the L stand for?)
FTFA! In all seriousness though; there isn't an aspect of computing that hasn't been improved by F(L)OSS. (What's the L stand for?)
Mmmm.. I'd have to disagree, based on my professional experience. FLOSS hasn't really improved business software. User interfaces, Groupware, Enterprise software, Tax software, Government software, Industrial software, Telecom, POS, EHR, etc. It's hardly ever written as FLOSS because it takes a lot of time and effort, and devs don't find it rewarding to write that stuff in their free time (most OSS is written because the developer just needed that code). When there is a FLOSS solution, it's not an improvement over the proprietary alternative.
Even in "IT", there is a huge dearth of quality FLOSS used to build... anything. There's lots of one-off projects that are good for one thing or another, but very few large robust solutions, and components never seem to mix together unless they have "custom integrations" to tie them to other systems. Microsoft will forever be the king of Enterprise software integration and business productivity tools, and each industry has its own "business software" titan. SaaS and PaaS are also more closed-source than open.
When there is some FLOSS that does something difficult like video rendering, or running distributed applications, the entire industry uses it. But for the bulk of the business world's needs, often the only solutions are proprietary.
Gratuituous could be used for free of charge since it's what we used in latin languages (which I suppose is the same root as gracious - at least in formal french we replace gratuit with gracieux to mean the same thing).
So I wonder if English, tired of borrowing a strange word, will use gracious or gratuitous some day to denote free of charge ! That would maybe avoid all these questions of what libre means !
I rarely use FLOSS as, floss is a known word for flossing teeth and for the dance move. Libre just sounds cool compared to floss.