Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction.
The terms and are different in the sense that Author releasing the Software under any free software License like GNU GPL…Disclaims rights and says that there is no copyright for the software product.
Also the modified product or any derivative product has to be released thru the same GPL license that’s why it is sometimes called as Viral License.
Though I believe that proprietary software is more Viral as it doesn’t allow you to do any derivatives work…
Whereas Open source license like BSD(Berkeley Software Distribution) license, the author doesn’t disclaims his rights to the software. He keeps the rights with him and has right to release the software through some other license.
Also it is not necessary to make the modified software available thru the same License. That means it can be used in proprietary software.
I think that this gives you the clear Idea how these 2 terms differ.
Now We have another Term
.
The term
is often used to bridge the ideological divide between the free software and open source software movements. The term FLOSS is useful for those who, for a variety of reasons, do not want to align themselves with one group and alienate the other. FLOSS can also be used as a neutral term when discussing free / open source software with those of differing ideological viewpoints.
I believe that this clears any doubts about these terms.
mail me at anuragvit[at]gmail[dot]com
dated 14th Sep, 2006