Open Source Software - Criticism

Criticism

See also: Free software#Criticism

The criticisms of the specific Open Source Initiative (OSI) principles are dealt with above as part of the definition and differentiation from other terms. The open content movement does not recognize nor endorse the OSI principles and embraces instead mutual share-alike agreements that require commercial use or the preparation of derivative works.

Of the vocal critics, Richard Stallman of the FSF, flatly opposes the term "Open Source" being applied to what they refer to as "free software". Although it is clear that legally free software does qualify as open source, Stallman considers that the category is abusive. Critics also oppose the professed pragmatism of the Open Source Initiative, as they fear that the free software ideals of freedom and community are threatened by compromising on the FSF's idealistic standards for software freedom.

Increasingly, the consensus term "free and open source software" is used by the communities at large to describe the common ground between free software and open source software.

Read more about this topic:  Open Source Software

Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    “Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
    —Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)

    “To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
    —Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

    “The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
    —George Steiner (b. 1929)