OSNews

actually, its alot more structured then you described. There is a real lack of understanding in the community of the difference between Free and Open source software. All Free software is open, but not all Open software is Free. To really understand the difference, a bit of a history lesson is in order.

Basically, it goes like this. Way back in the day when software began to get commercialized, there was an academic named Richard Stallman, who believed that restricting access to what was essentially an academic pursuit was unethical. He decided he was going to do something about it, and founded the Free Software Foundation as a non-profit organization. The purpose of the FSF was to promote Stallmans' views on the ethical nature of software, and attracted a few followers on campuses, but made next to no headway outside of the academic setting. As virtually everything became commercial, the FSF decided to make their own operating system that was completely Free from the ground up, first of all for their own use, secondly as a vehicle to promote their philosophy. This was named GNU, and while they did manage to accomplish a few big things (GCC, Emacs), they were never able to get their kernel to the point of even being usable, let alone fully functional.

While the FSF were busy doing their thing, a young guy called Linus decided to roll his own kernel for the fun of it. He banged out a really basic, poorly coded development version, and was well on his way to complete obscurity when he decided he was going to get other enthusiasts in on it. He posted his source code on some newsgroups, and asked people for help. Very quickly, Linux started developing a community, and began improving exponentially. Linus had a natural knack of dealing with the kind of people who would consider hacking on a kernel to be fun, and managed to manage this community of enthusiasts from all over the world quite efficiently. Very soon, he had a usable kernel. But the kernel, while being the most complex part, is not the only thing you need to run an operating system. Since Linus had no real desire to write high level code, he went looking for something he could put his kernel on.

It was pretty much a match made in heaven. GNU, with no Kernel, and Linux, with no userland. Linus looked over the GPL, and while he didn't buy into the philosophy behind it, liked the whole idea of having it be open to everyone who wants to play fair. With a usable userland around, Linux seriously started picking up steam, and began to come onto the radar of all the old UNIX hackers who never switched to apple or windows. Pretty soon, all sorts of people were working on various projects to improve on what was becoming not only a real decent UNIX, but also an incredably fun one to be a part of.

The defining moment was when one hacker with an interest in sociology, Eric Raymond, decided to start a project called fetchmail. He was fascinated by the community development that was going on, and really analyzed what was going on while he took his project from the start to being a category killer. Eventually, he wrote a paper on it called the Cathedral and the Bazaar, which basically layed out in detail the rules and style of management that Linus had inadvertently created when he brought help in to develop Linux. CatB was huge, as it became a virtual manual for creating a successful community around your project.

The final step was when Netscape contacted Eric and told him they wanted to move their development into more Bazaar style, and wanted his help. In the early brainstorming sessions with what was to become Mozilla, the idea of branding this development methodology came up, and Open Source was the name they came up with. Virtually overnight, all kinds of projects that had been calling themselves Free Software, started to identify themselves as Open Source.

Now, Stallman was pissed. Not only was Linux the resounding success he had always hoped GNU to be, but people were using his code, but not his ideology. Linus has no time for religion when it comes to technology, and Eric had created a methodology with none of the moral points that were so close to Stallmans heart. So the FSF went on a crusade to start to win the hearts and minds of the community back from the open source camp. This initiative is where the GNU/Linux, and FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) monikers came from.

For the most part, people use the two words interchangably, and while they will buy in somewhat to the five freedoms and all that, when you really explain the free software philosophy to them, they will side more with the practical then the religious side of things.

As it stands, the FSF is still pretty much ignored by the people who matter in the Linux community. Stallman believes that intellectual property is morally wrong, and has even gone so far as to say that people should pirate commercial software, since businesses should not get compensation for their ill gotten gains. Corporate involvement and the Free Software religion really do not mix, as they view the world in completely different ways. The open source methodology however, mixes wonderfully with corporate involvement, to the point where massive pillers of the industry like IBM, SUN, Novell, and Apple are all following the principals Eric Raymond published in his CatB papers.

Anyways, sorry for the long post, but I wanted to hit all the main points so I can link to this in future threads. Getting tired of writing out bits of it all the time. As you can probably tell, I am a huge fan of open source, but have very little time for the FSF. I believe that with so many things going on in the world, to devote your life to something as trivial as this is kind of sick. Not only that, but saying that software has freedoms just like people demeans the whole idea of what freedom is.