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<title>How Free Software and Open Source Relate as Categories of
Programs
- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
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<h2>How Free Software and Open Source Relate as Categories of Programs</h2>

<p>Here's how <a href="/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html">free software and open source</a> relate as categories of 
programs:</p>

<div style="max-width:max-content; padding:1em 1.5em; background:#f3f3f3">
<pre>
<code>
       /----------------------------------------------\
      / |                                            | \
     /  |                                            |  \
    /   |                                            |   \
        |                                            |
        |       Source license is GNU *GPL, Apache,  |
        |        original BSD, modified BSD,         |
free    |        X11, expat, Python, MPL, etc.,      |
        |        and executable is not tivoized      |   open source
        |                                            | 
        |                                            |
    \   |                                            |
     \  |                                            |
      \ |                                            |   /
       \----------------------------------------------  /
        |     tivoized (tyrant) devices          | O | /
        ----------------------------------------------/
</code>
</pre>
</div>

<p>Among all programs that are open source, only a minuscule fraction
are not free.  If the bottom row were drawn to scale, its text would
have to be in a tiny font, perhaps too small to read.</p>

<p>Tivoized or <a href="/philosophy/proprietary/proprietary-tyrants.html">“tyrant” devices</a> contain nonfree
executables made from source code that is free.  As of 2013, many
Android devices are tyrants, but some are not.</p>

<!-- don't link here to the list of nonfree licenses.
That gives the wrong idea, since most of those are not open source either. -->

<p>“O” stands for “other” and refers to
programs whose source is under licenses which are open source but not
free.  Several such licenses were written around 2000, and they were
used to release some programs.  It has been a long time since we heard
of software released under those licenses.  We don't know whether they
are still used.</p>

<p>Most nonfree licenses are not open source either.</p>
</div>

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<p>Please send general FSF & GNU inquiries to
<a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org"><gnu@gnu.org></a>.
There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
the FSF.  Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org"><webmasters@gnu.org></a>.</p>

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<p>Copyright © 2015 2015, 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.</p>

<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/">Creative
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative
Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p>

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<p class="unprintable">Updated:
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$Date: 2021/09/09 09:02:23 $
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