Open Source Is Not Free Software

May 20th, 2006 • General

Well not necessarily.

You see, proprietary software isn’t always closed source software (e.g. Java), and open source software isn’t always free software (e.g. Java).

The main difference between open source and free software is that the former is a business model, the latter is a philosophy. The slight difference is a long-term difference, a completely ideological one.

Now free software doesn’t focus on what you can do in other software, it focuses on what you can’t do. On Windows, for instance, you can’t choose which parts to install and which not, you can’t compile a live CD with breaking some legal documents, you can’t use high encryption in certain countries, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, it’s a huge list of “you can’ts”. Free software on the other hand says this (and I’m paraphrasing here): do whatever the hell you want to do, just don’t claim you created it.

The problem with free software is that its advantages are much clearer to developers, but it’s the end-users who are driving and motivating these developers. Your advantages as an end-users might not be apparent at first glance, but once you set developers free they don’t hesitate to work and improve the software that you, as an end-user, are going to use.

Being a developer doesn’t mean that I’m more tolerable to bad design. In fact, developers are more easily annoyed by the smallest glitches that would easily slide. Being a developer doesn’t mean I want my photo collection to look dull, or my music to sound bad, or my videos to be blurry. Being a developer doesn’t mean that I want spend hours tweaking and turning knobs waiting for my system to work, especially not when I’m in “end-user” mode.

Of course at the end of the day you’re free to choose any software you want, but that’s not what free software is arguing against, on the contrary, it’s all about freedom of choice. I don’t know why I keep coming back to the car analogy, I guess it’s the most simple for me to use: I don’t mind paying a premium price for a better car, but what I do mind is not being able to fix it myself, and by “myself” I don’t mean getting my hands dirty with the engine, I mean at least being able to choose the mechanic.

It’s not the availability of source code, it’s the rights you get with the source code. Nowadays you can get Windows’ source code, that doesn’t mean you can make actual use of it, but hey, it’s source code, right? The availability of source code is a key in free software, it’s an necessity for freedom, and it does affect end-users; it doesn’t matter to them, but it does affect them.

We’re supposed to demand freedom, not get excited about it.

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