• ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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    1 month ago

    I really don’t understand the difference between free software and open source at tis point. It would make sense to me if this would make it nonfree, but I don’t understand why is it not open source anymore. Isn’t the open source definition a broader one than that of free software?

    • jeinzi@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 month ago

      Short and not completely true answer: Free Software and Open Source are the same thing, just with different reasoning behind them. Hence “FOSS” and “FLOSS” are also used, which combine both terms.

    • gerdesj@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      If I give you a free beer, you have one beer. If I give you the recipe, you can make your own beer. You do have to make your own open source beer or you can hire someone to do it for you or perhaps take you through the steps a few times until you’ve got it. With luck there will be a community of open source beer brewers with whom you can interact and improve those recipes.

      Free software is free until it isn’t! The illicit drugs industry works in a similar way (the first hit is for free).

      • jeinzi@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        Never read something more wrong about the subject. I sounds like you don’t actually know what Free Software refers to, and that it has nothing to do with the price.

    • brisk@aussie.zone
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      1 month ago

      Open Source Software follows the Open Source Definition, while Free Software follows the Free Software Definition.

      They have heavy overlap, one is not a subset of the other, and they are similarly restrictive, just shepherded by different groups. I’m sure there are licences that satisfy one but not the other, but they would have to be few and far between; just reading through each it’s not obvious how one could satisfy only one definition.