Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software
Richard Stallman writes, "The rhetoric of open source has convinced many businesses and individuals to use, and even develop, free software, which has extended our community-but only at the superficial, practical level. The philosophy of open source, with its purely practical values, impedes understanding of the deeper ideas of free software; it brings many people into our community, but does not teach them to defend it." I think I am mostly on the side of 'free software', as opposed to 'open source software', as discussed in this article, because I see this as a matter of ethics, not programming efficiency. But as I have written before, my ethics are derived from my science, which could be interpreted as a question of efficiency. More...