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While both recognize most of the same licenses, "open source" licenses are licenses like APL, MPL, MIT, BSD and friends, licenses which give maximum freedoms, w
by zaarn 8y ago
While both recognize most of the same licenses, "open source" licenses are licenses like APL, MPL, MIT, BSD and friends, licenses which give maximum freedoms, while "free software" licenses like GPL, EUPL and AGPL attempt to maximize user freedoms.
There is a difference between those two and there are definitely communities that prefer one over the other.
I find it silly to yell "but they recognize the same licenses" when that isn't what it's about at all...
- dragonwriter 8y agoThere are existing, established terms—used consistently by both the Open Source and Free Software communities—for those different kinds of licenses, and the terms are “permissive” for what you call “open source” and “copyleft” for what you call “free software”. Under your terminology, the GNU All Permissive License, despite clearly originating in the Free Software community, would be an ”open source” rather than “free software” license. > There is a difference between those two and there are definitely communities that prefer one over the other. The FSF, by the actual recommendations it states on its list of licenses, explicitly prefers copyleft licenses for large programs, but considers permissive licenses fine for smaller programs and supporting files (and has specific recommendations as to which permissive licenses should be used.) The OSI is less prone to state preferences, and it'd be a misnomer to conflate the open source community with people who unconditionally prefer permissive licenses.