What is FLOSS?
We must start by giving credit where credit is due. From Wikipedia, "'FLOSS' was used in 2001 as a project acronym by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh as an acronym for Free/Libre/Open-Source Software."* We didn't create the acronym, we just like it as somewhat all-encompassing, and it sounds cool as part of our website name.
The FLOSS acronym is an amalgamation of several other terms used to describe the same thing, software that is "unfettered by technical and legal restrictions"*. Although there are different views and interpretations of the details, the basic principle is that the source code for software (computer programs) should be available for others to read, study, modify, and use. This "means that computer users have the freedom to cooperate with whom they choose, and to control the software they use."* There are several similar yet different terms and acronyms used for Free/Libre/Open-Source Software, among these are
- free software
- open-source software
- free and open-source software (FOSS)
- free/libre/open-source software (FLOSS)
- software libre
- libre software
Why so many and which is correct?
The term "free software" seems to have come first, however the English word for 'free' is ambiguous and there was misunderstanding that the software was simply free of cost. While this may be true, it is the freedoms that come with having the source code to study and modify that are important.
Over time variations have developed that provide additional clarity to the meaning of "free software", while holding true to the basic principles. There are many discussions, often heated, about which terminology is better or 'correct'. None of these are necessarily wrong. The best advise we can give is, when discussing software, try to use the same term that others in the discussion use, this helps keep the discussion on track and not shifted toward which terminology is 'correct'.
There are numerous resources on open source software. A good place to begin reading and find out more is this website; aside from that there are numerous good articles on Wikipedia that will lead to further study. As a matter of fact, the quotations(*) used above are from the following pages on Wikipedia.
