Page:The battle for open.pdf/49

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
38
The Battle for Open

between these two types of ‘free’ is one that arises repeatedly with regards to open education.

Related to the free software movement was the open source software movement. The two are often combined and referred to as FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software). The open source movement is commonly credited to Eric Raymond, whose essay and book, The Cathedral and The Bazaar (2001), set out the principles of the approach. The open source movement, although it has strong principles, can perhaps be best described as a pragmatic approach. Raymond appreciated that software development was nonrivalrous (in that you could give it away and still maintain a copy), and that code could be developed by a community of developers, often working out of their own time and not for financial reward. The driving principle behind open source is that it is more efficient to produce software by making it open. The mantra coined by Raymond is that ‘given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow’. By making code open then, better software is developed.

The Free Software Foundation make a clear distinction between Free Software and Open Source, stating that:

[T]he two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on ­fundamentally ­different values. Open source is a development ­methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, essential respect for the users’ freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software ‘better’ (Stallman 2012).

Raymond himself emphasises the practical nature of open source, stating that ‘To me, Open Source is not particularly a moral or