Comparisons
The Free Software Foundation has a related but distinct criterion for evaluating whether or not a license qualifies a program as free software. All licenses qualified as free software are also considered open-source licenses. In the same way, the Debian project has its own criteria, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, on which the Open-Source Definition is based.
There are also shared source licenses which have some similarities with open source, such as the Microsoft Reciprocal License (MS-RL). They are mainly used by Microsoft and can range from extremely restrictive to comparable with free open-source software.
Free software and open-source are two similar categories of software licensing but which criteria of inclusion has open source including a few more licenses than is allowed under the free software definition. Open source criteria focuses on the availability of the source code and the ability to modify and share it, while Free software focus on the users freedom to use the program, to modify it, and to share it.
Read more about this topic: Open-source License
Famous quotes containing the word comparisons:
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)
“The surest route to breeding jealousy is to compare. Since jealousy comes from feeling “less than” another, comparisons only fan the fires.”
—Dorothy Corkville Briggs (20th century)
“Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the marshes of Holland, but then the summer ended and most of the painters left, and the long dingy undergarment of the gray New England winter, gray as the spirit of my mood, came down to visit.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)