Free and Open Source Software - Appendix 1

Publikationen är ursprungligen publicerad av Statskontoret.

There are two main types of software that are considered ”open” and which are covered in this report. They are free software and open source software. Free software is what the name implies. The software is freely accessible and can be freely used, changed, improved, copied and distributed by all who wish to do so.
Although open source software is just as “free” it does not have to be free of charge. Besides being able to construct business models around the software based on commercial aspects, a company can receive direct payment by the use of a large number of licensing schemes and models, e.g. concerning support, further development, etc. What is important here is that the source code is freely available to the customer.

In this report we choose to treat both free software and open source software in the same category, hence the abbreviation FOSS, which is used here.

For proponents of FOSS, openness and unexclusiveness are fundamentally a question of democracy and a basic tenet is that information should be freely accessible to everyone and all without any restrictions. This does not mean that everything on the Internet should be free of charge. But what it does mean is that the inherent architecture of the Internet should be free.