2003: SCO vs the world

In 2003 SCO Group claimed a cluster of legal complaints about Unix and Linux source code:

What alleged IP violations SCO claimed? ¿What companies were involved?
SCO claimed that IBM had contributed part of SCO's Unix code to te codebase of the Linux Operating System. IBM would have done so without SCO's authorization, incurring on the violation of SCO's intellectual property.
    Moreover this, SCO sent letters to members of the Global 500 companies list to warn them about these claims, to prevent them from using Linux because of the liability that could mean for them.
It was, obviously, an attempt from SCO to stop increasing popularity of GNU/Linux Operating System.
    Apart from IBM and SCO, claims and counter-claims made by both sides escalated. IBM and Linux distributor Red Hat started legal action against SCO. Meanwhile, SCO sued other companies, asNovell, AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler.

How the SCO litigation was resolved? What was the final verdict?
A2) Litigation was not resolved once, with resulting final verdict following next timeline:
August 10, 2007: Judge ruled that Novell, not SCO, was the rightful owner of the copyrights covering the Unix Operating System.
September 27, 2007: Same judge administratively closed the case of SCO vs. IBM due to the fact that SCO went to bankrupt on September 14, 2007 [1].
August 24, 2009: US Court of Appeals reversed the portion of the August 10, 2007 district court summary judgment in SCO v. Novell. As a result, SCO was permitted to pursue its claim of ownership of the Unix copyrights at trial [2].
March 30, 2010: the jury returned a verdict in SCO v. Novell, finding again that Novell owns the copyrights [3].

Searching the Web, an "Open Letter" from Darl McBride, CEO of SCO, dated December 4, 2003, can be found. What does the letter argue about copyleft scheme and GPL license?
This Open Letter was written by SCO's CEO, Darl Mc Bride, on December 2004 [4].
On this letter, Darl Mc Bride alleged that GPL supposes a violation of the United States Constitution, and, in particular, to the Section 8 of Article One, that asserts that:

"Congress shall have Power ... to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

    From SCO's CEO perspective, previous article lead in 1976 to the Copyright Act, in order to provide copy protection in technology products:

"This Constitutional declaration gave rise to our system of copyrights and patents. Congress has enacted several iterations of the Copyright Act. The foundation for current copy protection in technology products is grounded in the 1976 Copyright Act".

  In that same letter, he states, in a lax and vague justification, that GPL is against the United States Constitution, in particular against Section 8 of Article One, due to next reason:

"The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left" by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof. As a result, the GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the "copy right" laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union."

Were GPL and free software licenses was threatened in any way? Why? (or why not?)
GPL is, despite its "Copy-Left" nature, a Copyright license. GPL license is, in fact, an individual contract to achieve copyright. Lawerence Lessig gives a justified description of why SCO's position is completely wrong: [5]

"The GNU GPL is a copyright license. It is the creation not of a government, but an individual. There is no way that an individual can violate the constitution merely by writing a contract. And the argument that he can reveals that the author has no understanding of the way constitutional law functions."

Moreover this, legal minds behind GPL, seemed in the meantime to be not concerned about SCO's claims.
Eben Moglen, who was charged with GPL enforcementa by FSF, asserted in February, 2004: [6]

"I believe the constitutionality attack on the GPL is not a tenable legal argument but is rather a public relations argument."

He also stated that, regarding Copyright laws, and the possibility for an author to waive copyrights:

"The existing copyright law is constitutional and our license, which fully observes all the requirements that the copyright law places upon it, is also presumptively constitutional."

To summarize, SCO claims were not correctly justified, so GPL and free software, from my perspective, were not threatened. In fact, GPL and free software authors and lawyers showed no worry about SCO's claims and, of course, had no problem to recognize it.

References:
[1] http://groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007092110013091
[2] http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/AppealRuling.pdf
[3] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100330152829622
[4] http://www.sco.com/copyright
[5] http://lessig.org/blog/2004/01/is_the_gnu_gpl_unconstitutiona.html
[6] http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/33121.html

Free Software vs. Software Patents

Traditionally, software patents have been considered harmful for free/open source software.
There are some causes of why software patents are harmful for FLOSS projects. Some of them are exposed below:

- The main reason: FLOSS projects are based, among other facts, on being "Open Source". Source code is provided, as they are based on the freedom for users to inspect and modify the code. This fact mades them more vulnerable to patented software detection compared to privative / close software.
- Besides this, software is basically, depending on the program complexity, on a great variety of other software components that are used together. Many of this commonly third party software that other components take advantage of could be patentable, and, for this reason, free software projects, due to its community based orientation, would make them non-viable, as they do not have same economic resources compared to the great software industry components.
- Another important reason against patents is the fact that they are normally tied to a tedious process based on a National Office that must issue them in response to an application. Meanwhile, copyright exists from the beginnng, and authors can select copyright terms with no further action. The fact that software is a very dynamic industry (even more dinamic if talking about FLOSS projects), make the idea of software patents to be completely against this dynamic character.

Different techniques and strategies that free software community have implemented (via FLOSS licenses and others) for defending against patents:
A) The main strategy against patents in FLOSS projects is including anti patent clauses.
Among the different FLOSS licenses, GPLv3, LGPLv3, MPL and Apache 2.0, for example, contain patent clauses with particular actions against patterns, including [1]:
- Grant of patent rights:
  1) GPLv3: Distribution of modified version grant explicit patent license for the whole program.
       GPLv3 contains a complete Section (Section 11) to clarify Patent royalty-free licensing:

 "Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version.

  In the following three paragraphs, a “patent license” is any express agreement or commitment, however denominated, not to enforce a patent (such as an express permission to practice a patent or covenant not to sue for patent infringement). To “grant” such a patent license to a party means to make such an agreement or commitment not to enforce a patent against the party" [2]

  2) Apache License 2.0: Grant explicit patent license as well, but only for the changes made by a certain distributor.

- Retalliation: Meaning that the granted rights from anyone who initiates litigation shall be retracted.
An example of this kind of grant is contained in MPL 2.0:

  "If You initiate litigation against any entity by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declaratory judgment actions, counter-claims, and cross-claims) alleging that a Contributor Version directly or indirectly infringes any patent, then the rights granted to You by any and all Contributors for the Covered Software under Section 2.1 of this License shall terminate" [3]

To summarize, FLOSS licences can solve a small bunch of patent related problems in two terms:
1) By requiring that distributors of a software package give recipients a licence to use any necessary patents.
2) By making patent aggression less attractive, revoking patent rights that a litigator received through the FLOSS licence.

References:
[1] http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
[3] http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0

1998: Netscape announce release of its Navigator as Free Software

On 1998 Netscape announced its proposal to release one of the most important product on the Enterprise as Free Software.
Text of the announcement can be checked on next link:

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/01/22/january-22-1998-the-beginning-of-mozilla/

The announcement is a declaration of the next Netscape Communicator version (5.0) to be released as free software, by the end quarter of 1998. What expected Netscape with this action?

As Jim Barksdale affirms: "We can ignite the creative energies of the entire Net community and fuel unprecedented levels of innovation in the browser market." From his point of view, it has benefits for three parts involved, the Community, Netscape, as well as Netscape's customers: "Our customers can benefit from world-class technology advancements; the development community gains access to a whole new market opportunity; and Netscape’s core businesses benefit from the proliferation of the market-leading client software".

It is, somehow, a very aggressive movement, with a high consideration on the Community developers on the net, taking into account that distribution will be under one of the most popular license, the GPL. Next paragraph asserts:
"The company will handle free source distribution with a license which allows source code modification and redistribution and provides for free availability of source code versions, building on the heritage of the GNU Public License (GPL), familiar to developers on the Net."  

Behind this decision there is also the Enterprise reality in terms of business: "Netscape has successfully shifted its business over the past year toward enterprise software sales and to revenues from its Web site business, and away from standalone client revenues. In the third quarter of 1997, standalone client revenues represented approximately 18 percent of Netscape’s revenue, with the rest coming from enterprise software, services and the Web site.

Preliminary results for the fourth quarter of 1997, which Netscape announced January 5, show standalone client revenues decreased to approximately 13 percent in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter of 1996 by comparison, standalone client revenue represented approximately 45 percent of Netscape’s revenue."

So, in a period of two years, Netscape had changed its business toward the enterprise software sales, the services and its Web site, meanwhile, the business quota related to standalone users had decreased dramatically. For this reason, this movement also implies changing the strategy to try to consolidate the Trademark for standalone users, although it is cost-less, with a very different strategy compared to its competitors, mainly Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

 The time line from Netscape announcement to Firefox first public release was as follows:  

1998: the Mozilla project is created as Netscape released the browser suite source code. In a year, new community members had already contributed, either adding new functionality, or enhancing existing one.
The Mozilla project become bigger and Community members got involved and expanded the original mission, creating a variety of browsers, tools, and different projects.  

2002: Mozilla 1.0 was released, with many improvements to the browser, email client and other applications in the tool suite. The major issue was that nobody used it, as 90% of Internet users were browsing with Internet Explorer.
The somehow unknown Phoenix browser (later known as Firefox) was released from the Mozilla community with one specific goal: provide the better browsing experience to the widest possible set of people.  

2003: Mozilla project created Mozilla Foundation, for promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet, focusing on Firefox and Thunderbird to demonstrate it.  

2004: Firefox 1.0 is released. It became a big success, as in less than a year, it was downloaded over 100 million times. So, the Mozilla Foundation is a clear example that commercial companies can benefit by collaborating in open source projects.
Obviously, Netscape achieved its goal, as Community developed a very successful navigator from its source code.

References:  
Netscape moves to Free Software:
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/01/22/january-22-1998-the-beginning-of-mozilla/ 
History of the Mozilla Project:
http://www.mozilla.org/about/history.html

Free Software within 10 years

- How do you imagine free software in year 2022?
    IMHO, Free Software will have a stronger presence in Software Industry, if possible, than now.  Important nowadays Free Software Projects (Linux kernel, Apache Web Server, Firefox Navigator), will continue with a higher presence in the different Software Industry Markets, under the same name or after evolving to different projects, but with the same roots that made them to consolidate.
Android will be the main Operating System used, taking into account that no Personal Computer will exist (as we know them nowadays), as Mobile Platforms (that will be much than smartphones) will be used at home attached to docking stations.
    With Android as main Operating System, a bunch of free software applications will exist, in the same way as now there is a huge variety of them for the different Linux distributions.
Main IT device will be a very powerful Mobile Platform which will allow all user necessities. This small Mobile Platform will contain "home-peripherals" (Television included) for this platform to provide Multimedia-Home Services (Gaming, Video Conference, Films, etc.).
    Google's Operating System will be Market leader, and Google will invest even higher for the Operating System itself as well as applications to be Free Software.
So, in general, Google will hold up to 70-80 % of Operating System Market. In IT devices with Android as Operating System, 90 % of Software Applications will be Free Software and, around 10 %, will be proprietary software.
    Regarding Software production models, Free Software model is an evidence that, agile implementation methods are successful. Linux Kernel project is a good example. It can provide up to a pair of versions in a day, so it is based on small but constant incremental changes. In fact, it contains tens of millions of lines of code, but still continues producing versions without collapsing, so it necessary has to use a good software production model.
    Despite this, it has also produced enhancements on other related industries, such as Software Configuration Management tools, with the occurrence of GIT.
So, Free Software Projects are, somehow, pioneers on innovation related to software production. And, as their nature is to be projects with a big bunch of developers spread around the world, will continue to be successful along the time.

Please , Leave your comments about your view on Free Software within 10 years. !

The GNU Manifesto

The GNU Manifesto is one of the first documents stating the goals of the free software movement.

- The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman. It was published in March 1985, explaining the purpose and philosophy of the GNU Project, which was undertaken to create a non-proprietary Unix-like operating system. It is also a call for participation and support. It is held in high regard within the free software movement as a fundamental philosophical source.

- The context in 1985 having to do with computer industry was aproximately like this:

  USA   The Atari ST, an inexpensive 8 MHz Motorola 68000-based computer, appeared.
  USA   MS-DOS 3.1, PC-DOS 3.1 released.
  USA   Symbolics registered the symbolics.com domain, the first .com domain in the world.
  USA   Expanded memory specification, a memory paging scheme for PCs, was introduced by Lotus and Intel.
  USA   Commodore 128 was released. Based on a complex multi-mode architecture, this was Commodore's last 8-bit computer. Cost: $299.95 for each of the CPU unit and accompanying 1571 disk drive.
  USA   Commodore released the Amiga, based on a 7.16 MHz Motorola 68000 and a custom chipset. It was the first home computer to feature pre-emptive multitasking operating system. It used a Macintosh-like GUI. Cost: US$1,295 for a system with a single 880 KB 3.5 in disk drive and 256 KB of RAM.
  USA   80386 DX released. It supports clock frequencies of up to 33 MHz and can address up to 4 GB of memory (and in theory virtual memory of up to 64 TB, which was important for marketing purposes). It also includes a bigger instruction set than the 80286.
  USA   Microsoft Windows launched. Not really widely used until version 3, released in 1990, Windows required DOS to run and so was not a complete operating system
  USA   MS-DOS 3.2, PC-DOS 3.2

  So, basically, MS-DOS was growing as the PC Operating System, while UNIX was the preferred system on the rest of environments (Government, Universities, etc.).
  FSF states: "By the 1980s, almost all software was proprietary, which means that it had owners who forbid and prevent cooperation by users. This made the GNU Project necessary"
  GNU was proposed as alternative to both, and proposed as a, somehow, free Operating System inspired by Unix. Richard Stallman asserts on GNU Manifesto:
  "Unix is not my ideal system, but it is not too bad. The essential features of Unix seem to be good ones, and I think I can fill in what Unix lacks without spoiling them. And a system compatible with Unix would be convenient for many other people to adopt.

- The immediate consequences of the GNU Manifesto were:
  * Many other programmers who were excited about GNU wanted to help. Many programmers showed their desire to contribute part-time work for GNU.
  * Prominent and reliable software components were started to be written:
    - The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)
    - The GNU C Library (glibc)
    - The GNU Emacs text editor
    - The Bash (Unix shell)
    - The GNOME desktop environment

  Not so immediate, but also important, was to acomplish the GNU-Linux Complete Operating System.
  * By 1990 all the major components of a Free Operating System were written except one: "the kernel". Then Linux, a Unix-like kernel, was developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and made free software in 1992. Combining Linux with the almost-complete GNU system resulted in a complete operating system: the GNU/Linux system. Estimates are that tens of millions of people now use GNU/Linux systems. Moreover this, it is the preferred Operating System used in Servers.

  The full text of GNU Manifesto is included with GNU software such as Emacs, and is available on the web [1]

- Initial releases of main GNU project programs were:
  1985, March    20: GNU Emacs - Version 13.0 is released
  1987, May        23: GCC - Version 1.0 is released
  1988, February   : glibc - FSF described glibc as having nearly completed the functionality required by ANSI C.
  GNOME was published very much later. First release was introduced on 1999.

  References:
  [1] - http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
  [2] - http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html

Free Software vs Open Source. Licenses.

OSI maintains a list of software licenses recognized as conformat with their definition of “open source software”. FSF maintains a list of software licenses recognized as conformant with their definition of “free software”.

Analysing both list is desirable, focusing on the differences, and trying to know whether they correspond with licenses that were not analysed by one of the two bodies, or if they have been rejected as not conformant with their definition.

Common licenses: (Considered both Free Software and Open Source Software by FSF and OSI)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Academic Free License 3.0 (AFL-3.0)
Affero GNU Public License: See "GNU Affero General Public License 3.0 (AGPL-3.0)"
Apache License 2.0 (Apache-2.0)
Apple Public Source License (APSL-2.0)
Artistic license 2.0 (Artistic-2.0)
Berkeley Database License / Sleepycat License (Sleepycat)
Boost Software License (BSL-1.0)
Common Development and Distribution License 1.0 (CDDL-1.0)
Common Public Attribution License 1.0 (CPAL-1.0)
Eclipse Public License 1.0 (EPL-1.0)
Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (ECL-2.0)
Eiffel Forum License V2.0 (EFL-2.0)
EU DataGrid Software License (EUDatagrid)
European Union Public License, Version 1.1 (EUPL-1.1) (links to every language's version on their site)
Expat License / MIT license (MIT)
GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL-3.0)
GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPL-2.0)
GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPL-3.0)
GNU Library or "Lesser" General Public License version 2.1 (LGPL-2.1)
GNU Library or "Lesser" General Public License version 3.0 (LGPL-3.0)
IBM Public License 1.0 (IPL-1.0)
ISC License (ISC)
LaTeX Project Public License 1.3c (LPPL-1.3c)
License of Python 2.0.1, 2.1.1, and newer versions /
  Python License (Python-2.0) (overall Python license)
Lucent Public License Version 1.02 (LPL-1.02)
Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)
Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL)
Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0)
NCSA / University of Illinois Open Source License
Nokia Open Source License (Nokia)
Open Font License 1.1 (OFL 1.1)
Open Software License 3.0 (OSL-3.0)
PHP License 3.0 (PHP-3.0)
Q Public License (QPL-1.0)
RealNetworks Public Source License V1.0 (RPSL-1.0)
Sun Public License 1.0 (SPL-1.0)
W3C License (W3C)
Zope Public License 2.0 (ZPL-2.0)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Licenses only considered as Free Software by FSF:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apache License, Version 1.0
Apache License, Version 1.1
BitTorrent Open Source License
CC0
CeCILL version 2
Common Public License Version 1.0 (*1)
Condor Public License
Cryptix General License
eCos license version 2.0
FreeBSD license
Freetype Project License
GNU All-Permissive License
Independent JPEG Group License
Intel Open Source License (*1)
Jabber Open Source License, Version 1.0 (*1)
LaTeX Project Public License 1.2
License of the ec fonts for LaTeX
License of imlib2
License of Netscape JavaScript
License of Perl 5 and below
License of Python 1.6a2 and earlier versions
License of Python 1.6b1 through 2.0 and 2.1
License of Ruby
License of the iMatix Standard Function Library
License of Vim, Version 6.1 or later
License of WebM
License of xinetd
License of ZLib
Modified BSD license
Netizen Open Source License (NOSL), Version 1.0
Old OpenLDAP License, Version 2.3
OpenLDAP License, Version 2.7
OpenSSL license
Original BSD license
Public Domain
Sun Industry Standards Source License 1.0 (*1)
The Clear BSD License
The Unlicense
Unicode, Inc. License Agreement for Data Files and Software
WTFPL, Version 2
X11 License
XFree86 1.1 License
Yahoo! Public License 1.1
Zend License, Version 2.0
Zimbra Public License 1.3
Zope Public License version 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Licenses only considered as Open Source Software by OSI:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adaptive Public License (APL-1.0)
Attribution Assurance Licenses (AAL)
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License (BSD-3-Clause)
BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" or "FreeBSD" License (BSD-2-Clause)
Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License 1.1 (CATOSL-1.1)
CUA Office Public License Version 1.0 (CUA-OPL-1.0)
Entessa Public License (Entessa)
Fair License (FAIR)
Frameworx License (Frameworx-1.0)
Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer (HPND)
IPA Font License (IPA)
MirOS Licence (MirOS)
Motosoto License (Motosoto)
Multics License (Multics)
NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3 (NASA 1.3) (*2)
NTP License (NTP)
Naumen Public License (Naumen)
Nethack General Public License (NGPL)
Non-Profit Open Software License 3.0 (NPOSL-3.0)
OCLC Research Public License 2.0 (OCLC-2.0)
Open Group Test Suite License (OGTSL)
The PostgreSQL License (PostgreSQL)
CNRI Python license (CNRI-Python) (CNRI portion of Python License)
Reciprocal Public License 1.5 (RPL-1.5)  (*2)
Ricoh Source Code Public License (RSCPL)
Simple Public License 2.0 (SimPL-2.0)
Sybase Open Watcom Public License 1.0 (Watcom-1.0) (*2)
Vovida Software License v. 1.0 (VSL-1.0)
wxWindows Library License (WXwindows)
X.Net License (Xnet)
zlib/libpng license (Zlib)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(*1) : They are considered superceeded in OSI, or the author has retired them.
(*2) : Considered as not free software license by FSF.

Mainly, all differences are because the fact that the other organization has not analyzed the license in particular.

EXCEPTIONS:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the one hand, next licenses, considered as "No Free Software" license by FSF:
- NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3 (NASA 1.3):
  The NASA Open Source Agreement, version 1.3, is not a free software license because it includes a provision requiring changes to be your “original creation”. Free software development depends on combining code from third parties, and the NASA license doesn't permit this.
- Reciprocal Public License 1.5 (RPL-1.5):
  The Reciprocal Public License is a nonfree license because of three problems.
  1. It puts limits on prices charged for an initial copy.
  2. It requires notification of the original developer for publication of a modified version.
  3. It requires publication of any modified version that an organization uses, even privately.
- Sybase Open Watcom Public License 1.0 (Watcom-1.0):
  This is not a free software license. It requires you to publish the source code publicly whenever you “Deploy” the covered software, and “Deploy” is defined to include many kinds of private use.

On the other hand, next licenses, as stated before, appear on FSF, but are considered superseeded in OSI:
- Common Public License Version 1.0
- Jabber Open Source License Version 1.0
- Sun Industry Standards Source License 1.0
- There is an aditional exception, which is Public Domain. OSI explains on next link:
  "http://opensource.org/faq#public-domain"
that Public Domain is, for practical purposes, Open Source. It states that:
'"Public domain" is a technical term in copyright law that refers to works not under copyright .... Not all jurisdictions have a public domain, and it doesn't always mean exactly the same thing in the jurisdictions that do have it.'
They recommend, basically, to better apply an approved Open Source license to software being released.

To which extent these differences are important or not (in terms of how similar the interpretation of both bodies is of “open source software” and “free software”) ?  Basically, the list of common licenses is big enough to ensure that, nearly in 90% (6/44) of the cases, a license that is open source software is also free software.
  Moreover this, there are a lot of licenses that have not been analysed by both organizations, but that will surely hint or not the category of Free Software or Open Source software simultaneously.
  So, apart from those estrange cases where FSF and OSI states that some licenses analysed by both are Free Software but not Open Source Software or vice versa, differences are not that important, and classification of licenses is very similar by both organizations.

Free Software vs Open Source. Definitions.

This post pretends to show the comparison among Free Software by Free Software Foundation, Free Software by Debian Free Software Guidelines and Open Software by Open Software Inititive:

  All definitions have common points on:

  1 - Freedom to use the program / No Discrimination on usage
  2 - Free to inspect and to adapt / Source Code availability  
  3 - Freedom to redistribute / Free Redistribution
  4 - Freedom to improve and redistribue improvements / Derived Works

  Basically, definitions are very similar. However, taking into account previous common statements, main differences between concepts are:
 
  A) FSF concepts:
  - Short and clear concepts. Stated on a permisive way, based on "Freedom".
  - Can be considered more generalistic than the others.
  - Can be considered the less restrictive.
 
  B) Open Source further concepts:
 
  Provides some statements more specific:
  - Integrity of the Author's Source Code (Redistribution limitations are allowed if license provide a way to
    distribute patch files with source code that modify the program at build time).   
    This statement supposes that this definition is a little bit more restrictive than the Free Software Foundation one.
  - Technology-Neutrality
 
  * It is stated using some limitations on "Must Not" statements, i.e:
  - No Discrimination statements.
  - License not specific to a Product
  - No Restricions on Other Software.
 
  C) Debian Free Software Guidelines:
  Is basically the same definition as the Open Software Definition one, so same peculiarities exposed previously can be applied.
  Differences with the OSI definition will be explained on next point.

- OSI Open Software and Debian Free Software definitions comparison:
  Basically, next statements are provided for both concepts:

  Free Software definition (by Debian):
      1.  Free Redistribution
      2.  Source Code
      3.  Derived Works
      4.  Integrity of The Author's Source Code
      5.  No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
      6.  No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
      7.  Distribution of License
      8.  License Must Not Be Specific to Debian
      9.  License Must Not Contaminate Other Software
      10. Example Licenses

  Open Source definition (by OSI):
      1.  Free Redistribution   
      2.  Source Code
      3.  Derived Works
      4.  Integrity of The Author's Source Code
      5.  No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
      6.  No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
      7.  Distribution of License
      8.  License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
      9.  License Must Not Restrict Other Software
      10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
 
  Debian Free Software Guidelines were first proposed on 1997, by Bruce Perens as main author, although other Debian developers participated too.
  Open Source Definition was created from the Debian Free Software Guidelines on 1998 with Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, as an attempt to provide a more generalistic definition (not so linked to Debian).  
  They are almost the same concept. Open Source Definition just changes point 8 to avoid Debian particularity.
  Moreover this, Open Surce Definition removes Example licenses statement, providing an statement that emphasizes on Technology Neutrality.