• Open Source is not public domain. Public domain code, by definition, is not copyrighted.
Open Source code is copyrighted by its author who has released it under the terms of an
Open Source software license. The copyright owner thus gives you the right to use the
code provided you adhere to the terms of the license. But if you don’t comply with the
terms of the license, the copyright owner can demand that you stop using the code.
• Open Source is not necessarily free of charge. Having said that there’s no obligation to
pay for Open Source software doesn’t preclude you from charging a fee to package and
distribute it. A number of companies are in the specific business of selling packaged
“distributions” of Linux.
Why would you pay someone for something you can get for free? Presumably, because
everything is in one place and you can get some support from the vendor. Of course, the
quality of support greatly depends on the vendor.
So “free” refers to freedom to use the code and not necessarily zero cost. Think “free
speech,” not “free beer.”
Open Source code is:
• Subject to the terms of an Open Source license, in many cases the GNU General Public
License (GPL) (see below).
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• Subject to critical peer review. As an Open Source programmer, your code is out
there for everyone to see and the Open Source community tends to be a very critical
group. Open Source code is subject to extensive testing and peer review. It’s a
Darwinian process in which only the best code survives. “Best” of course is
a subjective term. It may be the best technical solution but it may also be completely
unreadable.
• Highly subversive. The Open Source movement subverts the dominant paradigm, which
says that intellectual property such as software must be jealously guarded so you can
make a lot of money off of it. In contrast, the Open Source philosophy is that software
should be freely available to everyone for the maximum benefit of society. And if you
can make some money off of it, that’s great, but it’s not the primary motivation.
Richard Stallman, founder of the FSF, is particularly vocal in advocating that software
should not have owners (see Appendix C).
Not surprisingly, Microsoft sees Open Source as a serious threat to its business model.
Microsoft representatives have gone so far as to characterize Open Source as “un-
American.” On the other hand, many leading vendors of Open Source software give their
programmers and engineers company time to contribute to the Open Source community.
And it’s not just charity, it’s good business!
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GNU is a ‘self-referential acronym’ that means ‘GNU’s not Unix’. The GNU Project, initiated by Richard
Stallman in 1983, aims for a ‘complete Unix-compatible software system’ composed entirely of free software.
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