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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 21:49, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
It would be better to move this page to FLOSS instead of being under the FOSS name. FLOSS is more neutral as it clearly marks the differences between free, open source and price. Filiprino ( talk) 12:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
FLOSS vs. FOSS 2000-2019 on Google ngram viewer
these statements are not NPOV and/or constitute original research:
By defying ownership regulations in the construction and use of information − a key area of contemporary growth − the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement counters neoliberalism and privatization in general.[97]
By realizing the historical potential of an "economy of abundance" for the new digital world FOSS may lay down a plan for political resistance or show the way towards a potential transformation of capitalism.[97]
seems fine to attribute statements like this to third parties, but as written they look like statements of fact, when they are opinions/analysis that emerge from the page authors. They should either be referred to via quotations from third parties, or removed. there are other statements of this sort on this page that have similar problems. Mr H3vnu83987 ( talk) 13:22, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
this may be a problem with my understanding of english language, which is not my mother tongue. all the paragraphs in "drawback to proprietary software" describe disadvantages of FOSS compared to proprietary software.
Security and user-support, Hardware and software compatibility, Bugs and missing features, Less guarantees of development, Missing applications, Technical skills and user-friendliness all list things where FOSS is at a disadvantage.
as a result, it looks like the phrase "Infringes on user's civil liberties and human rights" is also talking about a disadvantage of FOSS compared to proprietary software, as in "FOSS would infringe on users rights" whereas proprietary software would not. a careful reading of that paragraph makes clear that this is not the case. the paragraph is instead talking about a disadvantage of proprietary software, and an advantage of FOSS.
given that all other paragraphs in this section are about FOSS disadvantages, i feel that this paragraph about human rights is better placed in the section above as an advantage of FOSS.
i found this issue because i had asked my team to research FOSS so they could learn about it, and when i asked them "what are the disadvantages of FOSS" they came back with the answer that FOSS infringes on human rights. 61.187.123.141 ( talk) 06:51, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
"Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is both free software and open-source software[a] where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way" -- The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) does not freely allow one to use the software in any way, as it prohibits not only using it in proprietary software, but prohibits any changes or additions you make from being used in proprietary software. So it even prohibits your changes from "being used in any way." There are GNU GPL'd pieces of software all over Wikipedia that are linked to this article in their opening sentence. They should either all be removed as being "free and open source," or this article should be modified to state that FOSS can cover both "free in any way," and, "not free in every way" licenses. 2601:18B:8200:3AE:5170:1738:CC62:F931 ( talk) 10:35, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
In the table under "Adoption by governments" it cites "In February 2009, the United States White House moved its website to Linux servers using Drupal for content management" to #79 links here: https://www.pcworld.com/article/174746/obama_invites_open_source_into_the_white_house.html
This page no longer exists & I'm not able to find a similar article on the pcworld website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.33.245.11 ( talk) 00:18, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
It's available on the Internet Archive TEDickey ( talk) 00:35, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
This article is the subject of an
educational assignment at University of Toronto supported by
WikiProject Wikipedia and the
Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available
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The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}}
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PrimeBOT (
talk) on
16:17, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
As noted, the definitions of free and open-access software are so similar that very little software would count as free but not open-access or vice versa. Having three articles results in duplication with no benefit for readers. Philosophical differences between free and open-source are appropriately covered in other articles. ( t · c) buidhe 16:44, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
[P]aid software can be open source. If that's meant to imply that free software is the opposite of paid software then that's completely wrong. Literally the lead of free software says
Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program.(emphasis mine) See also Gratis versus libre § "Free beer" and "freedom of speech" distinction. Nickps ( talk) 17:33, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
The topics are similar enough that History of free software and History of open-source software both redirect to History of free and open-source software. Before October 2009, this was titled 'History of free software', but it ended up here after a variety of attempted moves ( 1, 2, 3) and one low-participation RM about the hyphenation.
This topic is somewhat contentious: you can see for example we have an article alternative terms for free software that presents free software as the primary term, with open-source software and FOSS being later derivations.
It seems likely to me that all three articles could be merged if sources support it, but I haven't looked deeply enough into sources to definitively say. Retro ( talk | contribs) 16:15, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
References
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Free and open-source software article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1,
2Auto-archiving period: 90 days
![]() |
![]() | The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
![]() | Free and open-source software was a Engineering and technology good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Former good article nominee |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This article is substantially duplicated by a piece in an external publication. Please do not flag this article as a copyright violation of the following sources:
|
![]() | This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Naga Sravani Dasari,
Nehanalla9,
Lunchmeat30.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 21:49, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
It would be better to move this page to FLOSS instead of being under the FOSS name. FLOSS is more neutral as it clearly marks the differences between free, open source and price. Filiprino ( talk) 12:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
FLOSS vs. FOSS 2000-2019 on Google ngram viewer
these statements are not NPOV and/or constitute original research:
By defying ownership regulations in the construction and use of information − a key area of contemporary growth − the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement counters neoliberalism and privatization in general.[97]
By realizing the historical potential of an "economy of abundance" for the new digital world FOSS may lay down a plan for political resistance or show the way towards a potential transformation of capitalism.[97]
seems fine to attribute statements like this to third parties, but as written they look like statements of fact, when they are opinions/analysis that emerge from the page authors. They should either be referred to via quotations from third parties, or removed. there are other statements of this sort on this page that have similar problems. Mr H3vnu83987 ( talk) 13:22, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
this may be a problem with my understanding of english language, which is not my mother tongue. all the paragraphs in "drawback to proprietary software" describe disadvantages of FOSS compared to proprietary software.
Security and user-support, Hardware and software compatibility, Bugs and missing features, Less guarantees of development, Missing applications, Technical skills and user-friendliness all list things where FOSS is at a disadvantage.
as a result, it looks like the phrase "Infringes on user's civil liberties and human rights" is also talking about a disadvantage of FOSS compared to proprietary software, as in "FOSS would infringe on users rights" whereas proprietary software would not. a careful reading of that paragraph makes clear that this is not the case. the paragraph is instead talking about a disadvantage of proprietary software, and an advantage of FOSS.
given that all other paragraphs in this section are about FOSS disadvantages, i feel that this paragraph about human rights is better placed in the section above as an advantage of FOSS.
i found this issue because i had asked my team to research FOSS so they could learn about it, and when i asked them "what are the disadvantages of FOSS" they came back with the answer that FOSS infringes on human rights. 61.187.123.141 ( talk) 06:51, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
"Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is both free software and open-source software[a] where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way" -- The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) does not freely allow one to use the software in any way, as it prohibits not only using it in proprietary software, but prohibits any changes or additions you make from being used in proprietary software. So it even prohibits your changes from "being used in any way." There are GNU GPL'd pieces of software all over Wikipedia that are linked to this article in their opening sentence. They should either all be removed as being "free and open source," or this article should be modified to state that FOSS can cover both "free in any way," and, "not free in every way" licenses. 2601:18B:8200:3AE:5170:1738:CC62:F931 ( talk) 10:35, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
In the table under "Adoption by governments" it cites "In February 2009, the United States White House moved its website to Linux servers using Drupal for content management" to #79 links here: https://www.pcworld.com/article/174746/obama_invites_open_source_into_the_white_house.html
This page no longer exists & I'm not able to find a similar article on the pcworld website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.33.245.11 ( talk) 00:18, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
It's available on the Internet Archive TEDickey ( talk) 00:35, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
This article is the subject of an
educational assignment at University of Toronto supported by
WikiProject Wikipedia and the
Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available
on the course page.
The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}}
by
PrimeBOT (
talk) on
16:17, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
As noted, the definitions of free and open-access software are so similar that very little software would count as free but not open-access or vice versa. Having three articles results in duplication with no benefit for readers. Philosophical differences between free and open-source are appropriately covered in other articles. ( t · c) buidhe 16:44, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
[P]aid software can be open source. If that's meant to imply that free software is the opposite of paid software then that's completely wrong. Literally the lead of free software says
Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program.(emphasis mine) See also Gratis versus libre § "Free beer" and "freedom of speech" distinction. Nickps ( talk) 17:33, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
The topics are similar enough that History of free software and History of open-source software both redirect to History of free and open-source software. Before October 2009, this was titled 'History of free software', but it ended up here after a variety of attempted moves ( 1, 2, 3) and one low-participation RM about the hyphenation.
This topic is somewhat contentious: you can see for example we have an article alternative terms for free software that presents free software as the primary term, with open-source software and FOSS being later derivations.
It seems likely to me that all three articles could be merged if sources support it, but I haven't looked deeply enough into sources to definitively say. Retro ( talk | contribs) 16:15, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
References