classification: computer/network > > Software

Analysis:

What is open source software?

in the spring of 1997, some leaders of the free software community gathered in California. This community includes EricRaymond, TimO'Rerlly, Larry Augustin, president of VA Research, and others. Their concern is to find a way to promote the idea of free software to people who have avoided it before. They worry that the anti-business creed of the Free Software Foundation will make people stay away from free software.

At Eric Raymond's insistence, this group of people agree that what they lack is marketing activities, the purpose of which is to win ideas, not just market share. Finally, the result of the discussion produced a new term to describe the software they promoted: Open Source. They have formulated a series of guiding principles to describe which software can qualify as open source software.

Bruce Perens has done a lot of basic work to define open source software. One of the official goals of GNU project is to create a freely available operating system as a platform to run GNU software. From the traditional point of view of sofera boottstrapping, L inux has become that platform, and Linux was created with the help of GNU tools. Perens used to be the leader of Debian project, and the Linux distribution it managed only included those software that conformed to the spirit of GNU. Perens has clearly stated this position in the Debian Social Contract. The definition of open source software is the direct product of Debian social contract, so open source software is in the same strain as the spirit of GNU.

compared with GPL, the definition of open source software allows more freedom of authorization. Especially when proprietary software and open source software are mixed in the software, the definition of open source software allows a greater mixture to be generated on the basis of them.

As a result, open source software licenses can convincingly allow open source software to be used and redistributed without considering compensation or credit issues. For example, you can get the source code of the great Netscape browser and release it as another software (perhaps proprietary software) without informing Netscape company. Why does Netscape want this? There are many reasons, most notably, it can win more market share for their client code. These codes work very well with their commercial software. From this point of view, giving away the source code is a good way to build a platform. This is one of the reasons why Netscape people don't use GPL.

this is not a trivial matter in the club. In the second half of 1998, there was an important debate that threatened Linux so much that the Linux community almost broke down. The crack was caused by the emergence of two software systems, GNOME and KDE, both of which tried to establish an object-oriented desktop interface. On the one hand, KDE uses the Qt library of Troll Technology, some of which belong to proprietary code, but it is stable and mature. On the other hand, GNOME decided to use GTK+ library. Although it is not as mature as Qt, it is a completely free library.

in the past, Troll Technology had to choose between using GPL and maintaining their proprietary software position. The rift between GNOME and KDE would have lasted. However, after the emergence of open source software, although Troll still controls the technology they want, Troll can change their licenses for those who want Qt to meet the definition of open source software. The rift between two important parts of the Linux community seems to be closing.