To say that a software is “free” means that it respects the basic freedom of users: to run the software, to learn and modify it, and to redistribute its original or modified version. This is a matter of freedom rights, not price. The freedom we are talking about is the right like free speech, not a free drink.
These freedoms are crucial. They are important not only because they can please any user, but also because they maintain the cohesion of the entire society—specifically, the spirit of sharing and cooperation. As our lives and culture become increasingly digital, this spirit of freedom becomes more and more valuable. In a world full of digital audio, video and text, free software is increasingly important, and it has become one of the factors related to our basic freedom.
Today, millions of users are using free software; in public schools in some areas of India and Spain, all students learn how to use the free GNU/Linux operating system. However, most of these users do not understand why we developed this free system, why we established the entire free software community, and the moral logic behind it. Because today this free system, and even the entire community, are covered by the term “open source”. Along with this word, everything is introduced into a completely different thinking. There, freedom is rarely mentioned.
Image source: churchm.ag
Since 1983, we have launched the free software movement in the name of maintaining the freedom of computer users. In 1984, we launched a plan to develop a free operating system and named it GNU. With this system, we don’t have to rely on non-free operating systems and watch them arbitrarily deprive users of their freedom. In the 1980s, we developed most of the components of the system. To protect users’ freedom, we designed the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) and released most components under this license.
Not all free software users and developers agree with the goals of the free software movement. In 1998, some members of the free software camp split off and continued their activities under the name “open source”. At first, because the term “free software” could be ambiguous, the term open source was proposed. But soon the term open source began to alienate, making its underlying logic far from the original intention of the free software movement.
Some open source supporters believe that open source is nothing more than a way to “do marketing for free software”. Specifically, it is to show the practical benefits of free software to business people. At the same time, avoid talking about right and wrong, because business leaders generally don’t like this tone. Some open source supporters simply abandon the moral values of free software. Regardless of their views, once they start marketing open source, the values cherished by the free software movement are left behind. Thus, the term “open source” quickly became simply associated with various pragmatic values. For example, how to create a powerful, stable software. Many open source supporters have esteemed these values from the beginning, so it’s no wonder that outsiders have such associations.
The terms open source software and free software largely describe the same type of software, but the values they are based on are fundamentally different. Open source refers to a set of development methods; while free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is a moral bottom line. Because only free software truly respects the freedom of users. Open source software is different. The philosophy of open source is to consider how to make software “better”—only from a practical perspective. In the philosophy of open source, non-free software is bad because they use an inferior development method. The free software movement believes that non-free software itself is a social problem. The solution can only be to abandon non-free software and switch to free software.
“Free software”, “open source software”, since they all refer to the same type of software, why be so serious about the name? I’m afraid it’s still necessary. Because different words convey different thinking. Although it seems now that calling free software by another name can give you the same freedom, to maintain users’ freedom in the long run, people must be aware of the value of freedom. If you want to help people do this, then using the term “free software” is particularly important.
As members of the free software movement, we do not regard the open source camp as an enemy. Our enemy is proprietary (non-free) software. But we hope that people should at least know that what we are defending is the freedom of users. So we don’t want to be mislabeled by open source supporters.
The difference between open source and free software in practice
In practice, the requirements for open source are looser than those for free software. As far as we know, almost all free software is open source software. Although most open source software is also free software, there are some exceptions. First, some open source licenses are too harsh on users, and they are not listed as free software. Fortunately, only a few software use these licenses.
In addition, there is a more important point. Many products have computer functions and run free software. However, if you modify this free software and install it back on those devices, this behavior cannot be completed on many devices. In other words, these device manufacturers prohibit users from installing or running modified free software (this includes many Android devices), and only allow people or units authorized by the manufacturer to modify the software on the user’s device. We call such devices “tyrants”; this behavior is called “tivoization”. This term comes from the set-top boxes produced by TiVo company. Their set-top boxes are based on the GNU/Linux system and use a lot of free software. Users can use this product to watch video programs through the Internet. Although TiVo company released the source code according to the license, it prohibits users from running their own programs on the set-top box or reinstalling the system. This is the first “tyrant” we have seen. The software running on such products, even if the code is released under a free software license, the binary version running cannot be considered free software. Because they also restrict the freedom of users. However, they comply with the definition of open source software, because open source software only defines open source and non-open source through software licenses.
Common misunderstandings about “free software” and “open source”
In English, the term “Free Software” is easy to be misunderstood: the word “Free” has both the meaning of free and free. The free software we are talking about is “a type of software that can give users specified freedom”. To solve this problem, we published the definition of free software. For easy understanding, we explain that Free in free software is the freedom in free speech, not the free in free drinks. This is obviously not an ideal solution, it cannot completely eliminate this problem. A word with the correct meaning and no ambiguity is obviously better, but the premise is that the word will not cause other troubles.
Unfortunately, in English, the words that can replace Free all have some problems. We have considered many suggestions from others, but none is more “correct” than others (for example, in some cases, the word “libre” in French and Spanish is better. But people in India don’t know this word at all). Every word that may replace “Free Software” has some semantic problems—this obviously includes “Open Source Software”.
The official definition of open source software (it is published by the Open Source Initiative, and since this definition is too long, it is not fully quoted in this article) is directly derived from our definition of free software. However, there are also differences between the two. In some aspects, the definition of open source software is looser than that of free software. However, overall, the definition of open source software and our definition of free software are equivalent in many places.
However, the literal meaning of “open source software”—also the meaning that people generally think—is “you can see the source code”. This meaning is much looser than the definition of free software, and also looser than the definition of open source software. Such literal meaning includes many software that are neither free nor open source.
Because the literal meaning of the term “open source” is different from the original intention of open source supporters, many people have misunderstood this term. Here is a quote from Neal Stephenson’s article: “Linux is ‘open source’ software, which simply means that anyone can get its source code.” I don’t think Mr. Stephenson intended to reject or misinterpret the official definition of open source software. I’m afraid he just took the meaning literally and misunderstood the word open source. The Kansas state government also issued a simplified definition of open source software: “Open Source Software (OSS) is a type of computer software whose source code can be obtained freely and publicly; what users can do with its source code varies according to the software license.”
Even worse, the New York Times published an article that completely twisted the meaning of open source, explaining open source software as beta software—pre-release software for a small group of users to test—something that proprietary software developers have released decades ago.
Open source supporters try to solve these misunderstandings by continuously citing official definitions. This method is obviously correct, but directly quoting the definition seems more effective for free software. The term “Free Software” has two meanings literally, and the meaning of freedom is what we want to convey. A person who can understand the sentence “free speech rather than free drinks” will no longer make a mistake about which meaning of Free to use. However, the term “open source” has only one literal meaning, and this meaning is different from what it itself wants to express. As a result, it is difficult to find a simple way to explain the official definition. This leads to more misunderstandings.
Another misunderstanding about “open source” is: open source software means “not using the GNU GPL license”. This misunderstanding is often accompanied by another misunderstanding: “free software is software that uses the GPL license”. This obviously distorts free software and open source software. The GNU GPL license is also certified as an open source software license. Many open source software licenses are also free software licenses. In addition to GPL, there are many free software licenses.
The term “open source” has been repeatedly extended to various fields, such as government departments, education, science and other places where there is no source code at all, and fields that have nothing to do with software licenses. Their only common point is: more or less encourage people to participate in a certain activity. In the end, the term open source is extended to mean “participatory”, or “transparency”, or even less. The most tragic explanation has completely become an illusory business buzzword.
Different values can lead to similar conclusions… unfortunately there are always exceptions
In the 1960s, the far-left camp in the United States was divided into many factions due to differences of opinion. Although they actually had the same goals and values, the various factions were still incompatible and the relationship was tense. This allowed the right-wing forces to borrow strength to attack the entire left camp.
Due to this difference between the free software and open source camps, some people use the example of the American far-left camp to warn or slander the free software movement. But the current situation is exactly the opposite of the situation of the far-left camp at that time: we and the open source software camp have different purposes and values, but different views have led to many of the same behaviors—such as developing free software.
So the result everyone sees is: people from the free software movement and people from the open source camp often work together in the same project, such as developing software together. This is worth mentioning: although everyone has different views, they may work in the same project. Of course, our different views with the open source camp may sometimes lead to different behaviors.
The basic idea of open source is: allowing users to modify and redistribute software is to make software more powerful and reliable. Unfortunately, this is not a necessary condition. Many proprietary software developers are also very skilled. Sometimes, even if proprietary software does not respect users’ freedom, it can still develop powerful and reliable software. For this fact, free software supporters and people in the open source camp will react differently.
For a pure open source enthusiast—assuming he is not influenced by the ideals of free software—he might say, “You (proprietary software developers) didn’t use our development model, but you can develop such good software. This surprises me very much. Can you copy me a copy of your software?” This attitude will let the trick of proprietary software succeed—depriving us of our freedom.
Free software supporters will say, “Your software is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. Unfortunately, I have to give up using your software. I will support a project to develop a free software that implements similar functions.” If you truly value your freedom, we can defend it with actions.
Powerful and reliable software is not necessarily a good thing
Everyone wants software to be powerful and reliable, because we all think that software serves users. Since it is for users, powerful and reliable software can obviously better serve users.
But it must be clear that we only say that software is serving users when it respects users’ freedom. If the software itself intends to deprive users of their freedom and set various obstacles for them, then the more powerful such software is, the more fetters it means, and the more reliable it means that these obstacles are difficult to overcome. In real life, malicious rogue functions are everywhere in proprietary software: monitoring users, restricting users, backdoors, forced upgrades, etc. Some open source software supporters actually want to implement similar functions in their open source software.
Under the pressure of movie and record companies, more and more personal software is designed to deliberately restrict users’ behavior. The official term for this malicious function is Digital Rights Management (see DefectiveByDesign.org). This function is completely contrary to the core spirit of free software. Speaking of which, this is not only contrary to the spiritual level, but also in practice, DRM developers try to make users unable to modify the software, and even regard this as an illegal act.
Despite this, some open source software supporters still propose to develop so-called “open source DRM” software. The logic behind this is: publishing the source code of these software that restrict users’ freedom and allowing users to modify it can create more powerful and reliable software to continue to restrict users’ freedom. Then, these software will be copied to a device and sold to you, and that device will prohibit you from modifying the software running on it.
Such software may be called open source software, and it does use the open source development model. But it cannot become free software because it does not respect users’ freedom. If the open source development model can successfully create such software and make these software more powerful and reliable, thereby restricting your and my freedom, then it can only be said that this time open source has made everything worse.
Intimidating freedom
The main reason why those people split from the free software movement and launched the open source software movement was that the moral foundation of “free software” made many people feel uncomfortable. Indeed, if we talk about morality, such as users’ freedom, developers’ responsibilities, etc., it often forces people to think about some often neglected issues, such as whether certain behaviors comply with moral norms. This kind of preaching will indeed make people unhappy, and some people will therefore leave them behind and ignore them. But this does not mean that whenever morality is discussed, we should back down and keep silent.
Unfortunately, the leaders of open source have chosen to ignore these issues. They realized that as long as they turn a deaf ear to morality and freedom, and instead only discuss how much benefit some free software can generate now, they may be able to “sell” software to some specific users more efficiently, especially commercial users.
From the perspective of this theory, this method is really effective. The term open source has convinced many commercial and individual users to start using and even developing free software, thereby expanding our community. However, such expansion is only superficial, staying at the level of only focusing on practicality. Because the philosophy of open source only stays at the practical level, it hinders people from understanding the deeper meaning of free software. It adds fresh blood to our community, but it doesn’t teach those newcomers how to maintain such a community. So far, it’s okay, but it’s not enough to defend freedom. Attracting users to the free software community is only the first step of a long march, and they also need to know how to become the maintainers of their own freedom.
These users who fail to understand the meaning of free software will sooner or later switch back to proprietary software for some practical considerations. Countless software companies have begun to make such attempts to attract users to use proprietary software, even if they distribute free proprietary software. Only after users know how to cherish the freedom that free software gives them will they reject such temptations. Therefore, we must repeatedly emphasize freedom to gradually spread the concept of freedom. The creed of “keeping silent” may be useful in the process of commercialization, but overemphasizing it and making love of freedom be regarded as selfish will harm the entire community.
This crisis is exactly what we are currently facing. Many people participating in the free software community, especially free software distributors, always keep silent about freedom—often because they want to “be recognized commercially”. Almost all GNU/Linux distributions will incorporate proprietary software into their basic versions. They even advertise this as an advantage, not a defect.
The reason why software with proprietary plugins and GNU/Linux distributions containing proprietary software have room for survival and development is that most people in our community do not stick to their own freedom. This is no coincidence. Most GNU/Linux users are attracted by the term “open source”, and open source does not take maintaining user freedom as its goal. The words that ignore freedom are passed on from mouth to mouth, and the attitude of ignoring freedom is everywhere. Everyone does this and influences each other. The only thing we can do to reverse this situation is to talk more about freedom instead of setting it aside.
Summary
Open source supporters pull users into their camp one by one, and the task of reminding users to maintain their freedom falls on the shoulders of us free software supporters. We must dare to say “This is free software, it is the software that truly respects your freedom!” in a louder voice than before—every time you replace the term “open source software” with “free software”, you are supporting our movement.
Footnote
Lakhani and Wolf mentioned in their paper on the motivation of free software developers that a large number of developers believe that software should be free, so they participate in the development of free software. Unfortunately, their survey was of developers on SourceForge, and the SourceForge website itself does not consider software freedom to be an ethical issue.
Reprinted with permission: Developer Relations »
