Introduction

Hello! My name is Keegan Taylor. I’ve never really been one for blogging in a public setting, but I seem to be in a position where this ‘public setting’ is something I’ll be getting very familiar with.

Let me start off with a quick introduction to this blog as a whole. I’m required to make a blog, and post weekly to it, for a class on FOSS. That said, I don’t want it to sound like this is a drag on my life, I think I’m really going to enjoy this.

FOSS?

Free and Open Source Software. I realized not long after starting my class that I didn’t really have the grasp of what FOSS meant that I thought I did. To be honest, I’m still not sure I do. For one, I made the mistake that the free in FOSS meant software I didn’t have to pay for. And while that is true sometimes, that doesn’t really get to the heart of it, I’ve found. I was reading the GNU Manifesto the other day, and I found an enlightening tidbit:

Subsequently I have learned to distinguish carefully between “free” in the sense of freedom and “free” in the sense of price. Free software is software that users have the freedom to distribute and change. Some users may obtain copies at no charge, while others pay to obtain copies—and if the funds help support improving the software, so much the better. The important thing is that everyone who has a copy has the freedom to cooperate with others in using it.

Free as in freedom. A freedom for users to share and learn together. That’s a powerful distinction, one that makes me think a bit differently about FOSS. FOSS isn’t about paying less for software. It seems to me that it’s about letting people freely share, discuss, and improve upon others ideas. FOSS wants everyone to benefit from software.

Maybe this should have all been common sense, but I guess I just didn’t quite get the full memo up until now.

As a side note, this post was written for week 1 of classes during week 2.