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Showing posts with the label code

Open Source

Many people and business misinterpreted the term ‘free’ in free software thinking free as in zero cost (Gallego et al. , 2008). Some of the people realised that there was problem with the term ‘Free Software’. They wanted people and business to understand the idea that the software was open and the source code was available. So Eric Raymond, Larry Augustin, Michael Tiemann and some other member set up a meeting and came up with the concept of the term ‘Open Source’ (Open Source Initiative, n.d. a; Revolution OS, 2002; Gallego et al. , 2008). Eric Raymond jointly with Bruce Perens in 1998 went on to found the Open Source Initiative (Open Source Initiative, n.d. a).  Open source doesn’t only mean that the source code is open, but it is the kind of software which gives the users 10 rights which is mentioned in the Open Source definition: ·          The software can be freely redistributed to someone else. ·    ...

Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU System

Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organisation which develops Free Software’s and advocates the software freedoms and software user right. It is a community of ethical programmers who have contributed their time and effort so that rest of the society can enjoy the freedom software has to offer (Brown, 2010). Free software gives users the freedom and benefits that proprietary software doesn’t (Lee, 2010). The term free in Free Software refers to liberty (like ‘Libre’ in French), and not the cost like free as in free speech and not free as in free beer. The freedoms are to make changes or hire someone else to make changes to meet the unique needs, to redistribute copies, to share with other people, and to make improvements and publish them so that other people can enjoy the benefit too. Free Software provides the users with four essential freedom: Freedom 0 which gives the user freedom to run the software for any purpose, Freedom 1 which gives the user freedom to view ...

Introduction of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (F/LOSS)

The term Free/Libre and Open Source Software (F/LOSS) has evolved from two terminologies: Free/Libre Software (FS) and Open Source Software (OSS) (Brock et al. , 2009). The difference between these two kinds of software is that Free Software focuses on moral and ethical issues and stresses on the user rights toward a software whereas the Open Source goes for a corporate approach (Tong, 2004; Brock et al. , 2009). F/LOSS is licensed differently than existing proprietary software license and gives the users freedom under certain conditions so that everyone could enjoy those rights and freedom as well (Brock et al. , 2009). F/LOSS is developed and nurtured by the community of hackers all over the world (Subramanyam and Xia, 2008; Hauge a t al. , 2010 ) . ‘Instead of viewing this community as a threat, high-tech companies like IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Sun Microsystems have come to rely upon it, selling software applications and services built to ride atop the ever-growing free software i...