[Nadya]

There is a reason FLOSS exists as a term to differentiate itself from OSS and I think the ideological differences between the two are important. So does Bruce Perens, the co-founder of OSI and the author of the Debian Social Contract of which the OSI definition was based off: https://web.archive.org/web/20140716055445/https://lists.deb...

This was back in 1999 - it's been over 20 years and "OSS" has only been muddied further and further to mean "source available" since.

Pedantry aside tremon's response sums it up well: "Feature branch hosted in a separate repository."

[pabs3]

Where is this muddying happening? The only place I've noticed it is on HN, where others always correct the poster by pointing at the Open Source Definition.

Maybe it is time to ditch both "open source" and "free software" and go with something that has a clear meaning that isn't possible to muddy, like "libre software", prefixed with "always" for copyleft licenses and "currently" for permissive ones.

[Nadya]

Those who sit on the Open Source side of things constantly muddy the waters and claim they are one in the same. Those who sit on the Free Software side of things are adamant that they are related but different.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

The important bit is here:

> “Free” and “open” are rivals for mindshare. Free software and open source are different ideas but, in most people's way of looking at software, they compete for the same conceptual slot. When people become habituated to saying and thinking “open source,” that is an obstacle to their grasping the free software movement's philosophy and thinking about it.

[pabs3]

I meant to ask who is muddying the waters by claiming that "open source" == "source available" rather than the Open Source Definition published by OSI?

[Nadya]

Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development. They can still be technical users - hell they can even still be programmers - just not already entrenched ones. You're going to have to correct them and go "No I mean this" in the same way that the Free Software movement has to correct people with "Free as in freedom, not as in beer."

See the "Common Misunderstandings of “Free Software” and “Open Source”" section of the article I previously provided. This is a known issue by both OSI and FSF.

[cxr]

You're bordering on tautology.

> Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development [what "open source" means]

Where's the shock? Asking anyone about something that they're uninformed about and expecting an informed response is silly.

[Nadya]

Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about? Do you think there is a similar level of misperception among laypersons about the meaning of those initiatives? The common misperception regarding "Free Software" is that people think it means "gratis" rather than "libre". The common misperception with "Open Source" is that people think it means "source-code publicly available". But if the argument about common misperceptions being muddied water is not entirely convincing for you we can take another look at how the terms are defined.

The Free Software Foundation disagrees that "Open Source" and "Free Software" are the same thing. The discussion about whether they are the same thing should end there if we are to accept that the authority defining "Open Source" are correct in their definition of "Open Source". The same credence should be given to the authority defining "Free Software" providing the correct definition of "Free Software". If we are to accept both of these definitions as given by the authorities defining the terms - then they are necessarily different because the authority defining one of the terms says so despite any attempts of another authority who did not define the term at claiming otherwise.

In other words: X defines X and says X = X and X != Y. Y defines Y and says Y = Y and Y = X. Since X defines X and Y does not define X we must accept that X != Y per X's definition of X despite Y's attempt at redefining X such that Y = X.

It's uncharitable to point to OSI's definition of "Open Source" and OSI's claims that they are one and the same while completely ignoring FSF's definition of "Free Software" and FSF's claims that they are different.

[jrochkind1]

The post you cite by Perens doesn't seem to mention the term "FLOSS" (or spelled out), right?

I have seen "FLOSS" used as an umbrella term for ALL of it, that is anything that is open source is also "FLOSS". But you are saying it exists to differentiate from "open source"? Huh. Just to muddy the waters yet further.

[Nadya]

It doesn't use the term directly, no. Because to hackers, especially back in 1999, Free and Open Source were one in the same. It was just a difference of branding. However Bruce differentiates between "Open Source" and "Free Software" in writing and he only does so because public perception of what "Open Source" actually means had already been muddied in the year since OSI's founding and the freedoms afforded by FLOSS were already being de-emphasized and put on the back burner.

To quote Bruce:

> Most hackers know that Free Software and Open Source are just two words for the same thing. Unfortunately, though, Open Source has de-emphasized the importance of the freedoms involved in Free Software.....

> ......Sadly, as I've tended toward promotion of Free Software rather than Open Source, Eric Raymond seems to be losing his free software focus. The Open Source certification mark has already been abused in ways I find unconscionable and that I will not abide. I fear that the Open Source Initiative is drifting away from the Free Sofware values with which we originally created it.

There would be no need to make any kind of distinction between Free Software and Open Source if Open Source was being perceived as Free Software.

OSI was and always will be a marketing gimmick [0] created to sell the idea of open source to commercially interested parties.

> We realized that the Netscape announcement had created a precious window of time within which we might finally be able to get the corporate world to listen to what we have to teach about the superiority of an open development process. We realized it was time to dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with `free software' in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape. We brainstormed about tactics and a new label. Open source, contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing we came up with.

Not to downplay OSI at all. It was extremely important and widely influential in Netscape's journey to becoming Firefox and I'd even argue is still important today. But the issue centered around what "Free" means ("Free" as in freedom - not beer - which is why the term "libre" is often used as well) and that "Free Software" already had a poor reputation in the business world and so it needed to be rebranded. Eric Raymond made it very clear that he places importance on phrasing and branding and attributes the tactics used by OSI to its success and why the Free Software movement failed. [1]

Honestly a comment by Havoc Pennington on that very post, dated Jun 28, 1999, sums up the issue perfectly.

>I think Eric's analysis of the facts is basically right. i.e. the "open source as business" stuff has gotten us a lot of popularity. The danger is that we fall for our own marketing program. That is, new community members join, and we have to say "we didn't really mean that. Really we meant freedom. The business stuff is for the suits." An increasing number of new members just don't understand freedom, or copyright, or anything like that; they joined "Linux," not "GNU."

[0] http://web.archive.org/web/19981206185148/http://www.opensou...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170630183629/http://www.linuxt...