I believe it stands for Free/Libre Open Source Software. I think the idea is to explicitly indicate both free as in beer and free as in speech. However, to me it just sounds like throwing in a romance term for the sake of it. But maybe I’m just ill versed on the whole free/libre divide?
There’s lots of software out there that is available to use without payment, but is still license restricted in such a way that you are not permitted to redistribute, modify, use for commercial purposes, etc. To many, these rights are the far more important facet of “free” software, above what it costs.
But since the English language has the same word for all of these concepts, we have all these yucks running around with zero-cost but right-restricted software wearing the “FOSS” badge thinking they’re part of the club. So some people add “Libre” to the acronym to explicitly disambiguate.
FLOSS? FLee and Open Source?
I believe it stands for Free/Libre Open Source Software. I think the idea is to explicitly indicate both free as in beer and free as in speech. However, to me it just sounds like throwing in a romance term for the sake of it. But maybe I’m just ill versed on the whole free/libre divide?
English has one word for libre and gratis. Some people add the “libre” to make it explicit.
Thanks for the explanation. I’ll always call it FLOSS from now on.
There’s lots of software out there that is available to use without payment, but is still license restricted in such a way that you are not permitted to redistribute, modify, use for commercial purposes, etc. To many, these rights are the far more important facet of “free” software, above what it costs.
But since the English language has the same word for all of these concepts, we have all these yucks running around with zero-cost but right-restricted software wearing the “FOSS” badge thinking they’re part of the club. So some people add “Libre” to the acronym to explicitly disambiguate.
As someone else said its free libre open source software. Not my term I just use it because it tends to piss off the least amount of people.
I’ve read it as Free-Licenced Open Source Software before.
Which doesn’t clarify much IMO but it turns the abbreviation into a word!
At that point, just abbreviate it LOSS; Libre Open Source Software.
Free/Libre is a bit redundant, isn’t it.