EXPLAIN: What’s the Difference Between FLOSS, FOSS, OSS, and FS?
FOSS, FLOSS, OSS, FS…what do they all mean?
First, a couple of definitions are in order.
The ‘F’ in these acronyms stands for ‘Free’ and the ‘SS’ stands for ‘Source Software’. Now we can carry on.
- OSS: Open Source Software
- FS: Free Software
- FOSS: Free/Open Source Software
- FLOSS: Free Libre/Open Source Software
In reality, we should only need three of these acronyms: FS, OSS, and FOSS. However, due to the ambiguous nature of some English words (like ‘Free’!), the phrase FLOSS is required to provide clarity.
Free software can mean either free as in beer, or free as in speech. Therefore, there must be a distinction between ‘Free Software’, ‘Free/Open Source SOftware’, and ‘Free Libre/Open Source Software’. The term’Free’ in the first two phrases is ambiguous and doesn’t explicity specify whether free as in beer or free as in speech software is being refrenced.
FLOSS corrects this and makes it obvious that the software in questions is free as in speech by adding the French word for ‘freedom’ onto it: Libre. This gives us the acronym FLOSS as in Free/Libre Open Source Software.
While Free as in speech software is really a social movement, Open Source Software is a development methodology. Frequently the two are seen in the wild together, but there is no requirement for them to co-exist.
Open Source just means that a bunch of people are working on the source code to develop a project. Free/Libre software means that the end application is free to use, modify, study, and distribute. Consequently, Free/Libre Open Source Software means that the software was developed by a bunch of people using the Open Source methodology and that the final product can be studied, modified, run, and shared.
There is no guarantee that a piece of Free/Libre software was developed using the Open Source methodolgy and, conversely, there is no guarantee that an appplication developed using the Open Source methodology will end up being Free/Libre.
See how painless that was?
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2 opinions for EXPLAIN: What’s the Difference Between FLOSS, FOSS, OSS, and FS?
stephan beal
Oct 11, 2005 at 4:23 am
> Open Source just means that a bunch of
> people are working on the source code
> to develop a project. Free/Libre
> software means that the end application
> is free to use, modify, study, and distribute.
Based on that i must assume you’ve never worked on an Open Source project. You statement implies that OSS is may NOT be freely modified, distributed, etc. Granted, this depends on the exact license, but the GPL is as much Open Source as the MPL is and, in my opinion, much LESS free, despite the rantings of GPL fanatics, because it FORCES users to comply, and Freedom is NEVER IMPOSED.
Jon
Oct 11, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Well, that’s argumentative, isn’t it? Welcome to the site!
:)
That’s correct, OSS sofware MAY not be freely modified (note the emphasis should be on the word ‘may’, not the word ‘not’). Just because an application is developed using the OSS methodology does not mean that the end product will be released under any specific license which means, by extension, that the end user MAY not have the right to modify or distribute the end product. As you mention yourself, this depends on the exact license.
An application released under the GPL may not have necessarily been developed using the open source methodology. Remember, Open Source is a development methodology. It’s perfectly acceptable for me to develop an application all by myself without any input from anyone else (hence, not using the open source development methodology) and then release it under the GPL.
You’re confusing the meaning of open source. It does not just mean ‘I can look at the software’ although that is certainly a part of it. Rather, it pertains to how the software is developed.
As the Free Software Foundation notes:
…
I’m not sure what the MPL is, can you explain that to us?
As for the GPL being open source - that’s not correct. The GPL is a license that can be used to license code amongst other things. In itself it is neither open source nor closed source nor anything else other than a license.
I respect that is your opinion. I see it a little differently, however. Authors who have released software under the GPL do not do so under duress. They have 100% choice whether they wish to release their code under the GPL. Perhaps that choice is based entirely on their own volition if they have created the code from scratch, or perhaps that choice is influenced by the use of already GPL’d code within their final product. In either case, a choice is made. There is no force being applied.
I invite you to take a listen to show #13 of my GNU/Linux User Show podcast. In that episode I talk with Richard M Stallman for about an hour about Free Software, the GPL, and Open Source. It’s an interesting listen I found it helped to have the founder of the GPL and the Free Software Foundation explain these concepts to me.
Here’s a link to that show: here
Thanks for the feedback!
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