Re: Woctave-another gui front end

[Francesco Potortì]

Stephen Montgomery-Smith:
>> And by the way, what is this difference between "open source" and 
>> "free"?  

Sergei Steshenko:
>Restriction/strings attached.

No, that's a wrong answer.

What is "open source software" is defined by the Open Source Initiative
(at <http://opensource.org/osd>), while what is "free software" had been
defined some years earlier by the Free Software Foundation (at
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>).

Both definitions are meant to partition the field of software licenses
into those that comply with the definition and those that do not, and
provide a reason for creating such a partitioning.

The partitioning is the same (i.e. software licences that are open
source are also free and viceversa), but the reasons are somewhat
specular.

Those speaking about free software claim that freedom is the purpose,
and convenience is a nice but not necessary consequence; while those
speaking abut open source claim that convenience is the purpose, while
freedom is a nice but non ncesessary consequence.

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