From where the concept of open source originated ???
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Free Software Foundation's essays.Originally posted by thaparian354
Wikipedia's Open Software Foundation entry.
We are programmers, not historians. -
It is incorrect to say that the Free Software Foundation has anything to do with "Open Source" software, they do not.
Eric Raymond, author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is reputed to have coined the phrase.
Richard Stallman is the author of the GPL and the originator of the term "Free Software".
Open Source is distinct from Free Software in that it advocates a *software development methodology* (that of sharing development between geographically disperesed programmers using the internet as a communications medium) wheras Free Software advocates freedom of source-code (ensuring that users are always entitled to get the source code of software licensed under a Free Software license). Some Open Source software is not Free Software, because it does not meet the Free Software Foundation's definition of Free Software (i.e. it does not provide or maintain the "Four Freedoms" - look them up on the FSF website).
The GPL (General Public License) is the primary example of a Free Software License, wheras the BSD (Berkley Systems Department) License is a common Open Source License. For comparison, check out Sun's CDDL license, which is distinctly "Open Source" rather than "Free Software".
hth,
-cyberveganComment
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