Ishan Talks: Proprietary, Free and Open Source Software: How are they different?

When considering software, many of us are aware that there are (i) free of charge software which can be downloaded over the internet; and (ii) proprietary software which need to be purchased. However, the confusion starts when we come across software marked as open source being sold and others which are marked as proprietary being made available free of charge. So what is free and what is not?

By definition proprietary software are solely owned by an individual, a group of developers or an organisation. This means that the developing body holds the intellectual property (IP) rights for the idea behind the software application, the source-code, the algorithms used as well as any graphical user interface (GUI) designs. These software are usually sold as products under specific licensing schemes but maybe provided free of charge as trial or evaluation versions which have limited features. Even though these might be mistaken to be free software, they are only “free to use” software which cannot be copied, shared, repurposed, improved or sold without the permission of the IP owners.

Before discussing free software, Open Source Software (OSS) and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), the term “free” needs to be clarified. In the context of these three types of software, the term “free” doesn’t necessarily mean that the software application is provided free of charge (FOC) but rather that the user has the “freedom” to modify and/or improve the source code.

There are only very subtle differences between free software, OSS and FOSS. Free software are usually software applications developed by a single body such as organisations, universities, research groups etc. which are released along with the source code. OSS are mostly public collaborative development projects which involve a large number of developers voluntarily contributing to a single project. These projects make the complete source code freely available. FOSS are the larger umbrella which covers both free software as well as OSS. Under FOSS the users have the right to copy, share, repurpose, improve or even sell the software application provided that it is released under the same original guidelines.

More details:

Free software

Open Source Software

Free and Open Source Software

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software

This article is an adaptation of "Proprietary, Free and Open Source Software: How are they different?" (http://cnx.org/content/m43536/latest/) © 2012 by Ishan Abeywardena, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license: Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0)