Software Engineering Stack Exchange
Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [foss]

Free and Open Source Software

The tag indicates that the question concerns Free Software or Open Source Software or both. The acronym FOSS stands for Free and Open Source Software, a term that is explicitly intended to capture both Free Software and Open Source Software. For details on the difference between the two approaches see the Wikipedia article on FOSS.

27 questions
18
votes
6 answers

Open Source but not Free Software (or vice versa)

The definition of "Free Software" from the Free Software Foundation: “Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” Free software is a…
TRiG
  • 1,170
  • 1
  • 11
  • 21
17
votes
7 answers

How successful is GPL in reaching its goals?

There are, broadly, two types of FOSS licenses when it relates to commercial usage of the code - let's say the GPL-type and the BSD-type. The first is, broadly, restrictive about commercial usage (by usage I also mean modification and…
StasM
  • 3,377
  • 2
  • 23
  • 28
13
votes
3 answers

Does there exist a decent monetary bounty system for open source software?

I personally would be willing to pay $10 to someone who can offer to make microphone drivers work with one of my laptops under Ubuntu 10.10. I thought that other users could contribute to the same thing, and thus find a willing developer. Does there…
Job
  • 6,459
  • 3
  • 32
  • 54
11
votes
8 answers

free as in free beer

Some years ago (more precisely in 1998) the confusion english-speaking people start making with the term free when applied to software led some members of the free software foundation to create a new term: open source (…
DrBeco
  • 213
  • 1
  • 9
10
votes
4 answers

How do I make money from my FOSS while staying anonymous?

Let's say that: You have created a FOSS project that other people find useful, perhaps useful enough to donate to or pay for modifications to be done. It is a perfectly legitimate and innocuous software project. It has nothing to do with…
user21007
  • 876
  • 6
  • 10
8
votes
1 answer

Is there a graph with FOSS licenses detailing what can be linked with what?

I'm looking for a chart like this: Basically something that tells you whether an app with a given license can be linked with a library of a given license. Does such a thing exist?
Nathan Osman
  • 710
  • 6
  • 16
8
votes
3 answers

What are the options for licensing a code project with "license soup" in the sources?

I'm working on a software project which I intend to release as FOSS in some way. My code includes quite a few header/source files written by others: Better Enums A slightly modified GSL Lite An adaptation of some of GCC 4.9.3's libstdc++ for use in…
einpoklum
  • 2,478
  • 1
  • 13
  • 30
6
votes
1 answer

Are there any FOSS operating systems available that conform to NASA's JPL coding standards?

I, like many others, have been completely enamored with the recent successful landing of Mar's Curiosity rover. After reading a couple of articles, and following a few links, I've found a couple C based coding standards that NASA JPL uses to…
RLH
  • 533
  • 4
  • 16
6
votes
3 answers

How should I go about re-releasing a GPL-licensed project?

A few months ago we found a library licensed under GPL that fit the bill for what we were looking to do at that time. We included it in our codebase and all was fine. Now, a few frantic months of coding later, we've refactored the hell out of the…
ChrisR
  • 779
  • 1
  • 5
  • 13
4
votes
2 answers

Licencing FOSS for profit

Some projects are available under restrictive FOSS licenses (GPL or AGPL, for example) which preclude them from being used in proprietary projects. The developers can then sell separate commercial licenses which allow the code to be used in…
TRiG
  • 1,170
  • 1
  • 11
  • 21
4
votes
2 answers

Most appropriate OSS license for infrastructure code

I'm looking into potentially releasing some infrastructure code (related to automated builds and deployments) as OSS and I'm curious about how the various OSS licenses effect it. Specifically, LGPL prevents the code itself (part/whole) being…
Richard Szalay
  • 249
  • 1
  • 7
3
votes
2 answers

How can I consult users of my FOSS library about a design change idea?

I have a FOSS library made public through GitHub. It's not a big library, it doesn't have a community around it or anything like that - but it does get a few dozen unique clones a week. Now, I'm considering a design change in this library. It's not…
einpoklum
  • 2,478
  • 1
  • 13
  • 30
3
votes
2 answers

Professional Development: Finding that "pet project" to work on - then managing other commitments

At the moment, like a fair few of you I'd imagine, I spend at least 40 hours working on projects that use a specific set of technologies. Sometimes I'm doing maintenance, and have those technologies enforced, and sometimes I'm doing new builds.. but…
Fergus In London
  • 868
  • 7
  • 14
2
votes
1 answer

Working on Free Software

My main experience is with iOS, but I'd like to move into writing free and open source software instead. Are there many jobs out there that allow you to work on projects like this? I've looked on the FSF website among others, but I'm having trouble…
Adam Colvin
  • 131
  • 2
2
votes
2 answers

Properly licensing FOSS: text location

I have a few FOSS projects that I want to release under the BSD license, since I only wish to maintain the intellectual property of the code, that others will know I've been writing it. I suppose all I need to do is: Have a file called LICENSE only…
Dor
  • 123
  • 5
1
2