To meet the definition of “free software,” the FSF requires that the software license respect the civil liberties/human rights of what the FSF calls the “four essential freedoms” of the software user. [11] Before examining this definition, note that this definition is really important (it is not just in a dusty and unused part of American law or policy). The FAR specifically requires in Part 12 that U.S. government agencies must, in accordance with the guidelines, attempt to use commercial or non-development related items wherever they can. Since governments require a lot of software that is not designed exclusively for government use, the FAR policy is proving to be a fairly strong requirement to use commercial items whenever possible. Official comments on the two common formal definitions of FLOSS both explicitly state that FLOSS is not “non-commercial”: As previously mentioned, the CIO of the Department of the Navy, Robert J. Carey, signed a memorandum entitled “Department of the Navy Open Source Software Guidance” on June 5, 2007, confirming that FLOSS that meets the standard definition of “commercial item” and “COTS” are in fact “commercial items” and “COTS”. For more information about applying FLOSS to U.S. government procurements, see Open Source Software (OSS) in U.S. Government Procurement.
If you look at the full definition of the word “commercial,” which means anything that involves an exchange or trade, almost all FLOSS projects are commercial. Which should not come as a surprise; Economists often point out the difference between wealth and money. Some FLOSS projects try to make money (directly or indirectly), but almost all FLOSS projects try to create wealth in the form of improved software. And they try to create wealth through trade and commerce. a fundamentally commercial term. Ganesh Prasads How does the capitalist see open source? captures this concept well, and it was written in May 2001. The definition of open source software is used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to determine whether a software license qualifies for the organization`s badge for open source software. The definition was based on Debian Free Software guidelines, mostly written and adapted by Bruce Perens.
[12] [13] Perens did not base his writings on the Free Software Foundation`s Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, which were only later available on the Internet. [14] Perens went on to say that he felt Eric Raymond`s promotion of open source unfairly overshadowed the efforts of the Free Software Foundation and reiterated his support for Free Software. [15] In the following 2000s, he again talked about open source. [16] [17] A related acronym used by many governments is COTS, short for “Commercial Off-The-Shelf.” Are almost all FLOSS programs COTS? The COTS Based Software Development and Integration article defines the term COTS as (1) commercial, essentially according to the FAR definition, and (2) ready to use, which means that it already exists. Therefore, FLOSS programs that are already licensed to the public and have non-governmental use are COTS. Is it possible that FLOSS is non-commercial according to these definitions? Yes, but it`s rare. According to the U.S. government`s definition, software used solely for government purposes is non-commercial. But once software is released as free software, people usually generalize it for more uses, so software that is originally only used by the government will soon adopt non-governmental use. A program where the user has FLOSS rights but does not make it available to the public is also non-commercial according to these definitions. But generally, FLOSS is commercial according to these definitions. So even if you limit yourself to the “for-profit” definition of “commercial,” where profit is measured solely in terms of money, it makes no sense to say that FLOSS is the opposite of “commercial.” Someone who uses “commercially” as the opposite of FLOSS will often have a hard time explaining why Red Hat is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (for example).
In fact, Red Hat, IBM, and even Microsoft have all released at least one FLOSS product, and they`d be surprised to discover that they`re not commercial enterprises. That should be enough to bury this nonsense. But that covers a definition of commercial; If you include the broader definition of “commercial,” i.e. public commerce, almost all FDLOSS projects are commercial. Richard Stallman`s definition of free software, adopted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), defines free software as a matter of freedom, not price,[8] and defends the four essential freedoms. The first known publication of the definition of his free software idea was published in the February 1986 issue[9] of the now-defunct GNU`s Bulletin of the FSF. The canonical source of the document can be found in the Philosophy section of the GNU Project website. From August 2017, it will be published in 40 languages. [10] When I talk to others about free software/open source software (FLOSS), I still hear that many people mistakenly use the term “commercial software” as if it had the opposite meaning of FLOSS (also known as open source software, free software, or OSS/FS). This is despite (1) increased business development and support for FLOSS, (2) the goal of most FLOSS projects to incorporate improvements (which are actually a form of financial gain), (3) the official definitions of “commercial item” that include FLOSS, and (4) FLOSS licenses and projects that clearly endorse commercial support. Terms like “proprietary software” or “closed source” are plausible antonyms of FLOSS, but “commercial” is absurd as an antonym. The most popular FLOSS license in the world is the GNU General Public License (GPL), and in version 2 of the GPL it includes a method of copying and distributing the program (“Method 3c”), which can only be used for non-commercial distribution (presumably they mean the for-profit definition).
Since other methods are not as restrictive, the clear implication is that commercial (for-profit) distribution methods are allowed as long as they comply with the license. Which brings me to an interesting point that can be confusing. FLOSS is an acronym that stands for Free and Open Source Software – a collection of terms that encompass various software movements and licensing styles that encourage modification and redistribution of software source code. The term free software refers to software that guarantees the four freedoms, while the term free software refers to software that meets the 10 criteria of the open source definition. “Open source” was coined by Christine Peterson as a synonym for business-friendly and freedom-independent “free software,” and aside from very minor variations (there are only one or two minor licenses on which there is disagreement), the two terms refer to the same set of software. Licensing and discussions around licenses and projects also make it clear that FLOSS project developers generally have no problems with business development and support, even if you use the narrower definition of “for-profit” for “commercial.” In fact, many projects are founded by commercial organizations as a kind of consortia (e.g., X Windows and Apache), while others are founded by individual commercial organizations (e.g., MySQL and Qt). Trying to use the word “commercial” as an antonym for FLOSS is becoming more and more absurd every day. Even if you use the narrower definition of commercial, which means “for-profit,” there are too many for-profit FLOSS projects for this use to make sense.