The difference is the intent of the person who RELEASES the software. Free software under the GPL is deliberately restrictive. Put briefly, it’s designed to pr

The difference is the intent of the person who RELEASES the software. Free software under the GPL is deliberately restrictive. Put briefly, it’s designed to prevent someone from taking your software and releasing it under a license more restrictive than the GPL itself. It enforces the right to run the software, study it, distribute changed versions, and benefit from other people’s changes. With “open source”, meaning something like the MIT license, anyone can take the software you wrote, change it to add features, wrap it up in a fancy package, and sell it without source code access. You wouldn’t be able to even run the new version without buying a copy. Stallman has been explaining this for nearly forty years. He even wrote a book about it. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ https://shop.fsf.org/books-docs/free-software-free-society-s https://shop.fsf.org/books-docs/free-software-free-society-s...