I have a feeling we just walked into a political minefield. Anyway, My understanding of the words is based largely on GNU [1][2]. The main point brought up [1]

I have a feeling we just walked into a political minefield. Anyway, My understanding of the words is based largely on GNU [1][2]. The main point brought up [1] and [2] is that "free software" is to protect user freedoms, while "open source" software is about quality. In all cases, free software is open source, however, as I explained in my response to notatoad, open source software is not necessarily free, however it almost always is. [1]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h... [2]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html