Did you see the otter episode of South Park? I don’t remember the actual name, but it was the episode with the otters in it. Intelligent, talking otters. In it, Richard Dawkins had spread atheism and rationality to such an extent that in the future there was no religion at all. There was a war between two factions of humanity and the intelligent, talking otters. The war was over what the name for the atheist group should be.
FLOSS is a bit like the compromise they couldn’t reach in the South Park episode.
In 1986, the term “free software” first appeared. Richard M. Stallman used it in the first GNU’s Bulletin.(1) He went on to specify:
The word “free” in our name does not refer to price; it refers to freedom. First, the freedom to copy a program and redistribute it to your neighbors, so that they can use it as well as you. Second, the freedom to change a program, so that you can control it instead of it controlling you; for this, the source code must be made available to you.
“Open Source” was coined nearly a decade later in 1998.(2) They wanted to create a new image for what they were doing, free from the history associated with “Free Software.” They believed the term “open source” would “sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated [the creation of] Netscape”(2) as well as address any confusion about whether the “free” in “free software” referred to beer or speech–that is to say whether it was about cost or liberty.(3)
However, this has proven to not just be a matter of nomenclature. Both schools of thought have provided extensive and specific definitions of their respective term. These definitions include licenses that fall under their name. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) sums it up:
The term “open source” software is used by some people to mean more or less the same category as free software. It is not exactly the same class of software: they accept some licenses that we consider too restrictive, and there are free software licenses they have not accepted. However, the differences in extension of the category are small: nearly all free software is open source, and nearly all open source software is free.(4)
Free Software and Open Source Software are like the Baldwins. There are things that can be used to differentiate one from the other, but you can’t always tell what they are unless you know what you’re looking for. Some things are Free, some things are Open Source, and some things are both. Largely, the groups differ on philosophical grounds, preferring associations with ideas like freedom and concepts like openness.
“Libre” was later offered as another term. The word is related to libere, the Latin root from which words like “liberty” also descend. It was meant to offer an alternative to the ambiguity of “free,” specifically referring to the freedom rather than the lack of cost. I can’t find anything to cite here, but the term was coined because of its relation to languages like French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
FLOSS was used as a compromise by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh in 2001. The term was adopted by the European Commission in some official documentation starting in 2001.(5) “FLOSS” is becoming the preferred term among academics, people not invested in either side of the nomenclature debate, and people who generally don’t want to offend anyone. While “Free” and “Open Source”–and to some extent “Free/Libre”–come from different philosophical backgrounds and do have slight, but important, differences in licensing, they are the same in overall message and mission.
But, this isn’t just about software. I use the term “FLOSX,” pronounced “floss-IX” to mean “Free/Libre/Open Source X.” X is a standard variable, like you used back in algebra class (or still use today in countless other ways.) FLOSX–which will inevitably become “flosx” at some point–refers to anything that is free/libre/open source. It can be about art, culture, hardware, software, or anything else. FLOSX is about a set of ideals and practical methods for creation and distribution applicable to anything you’re passionate about.
(1) Stallman, R.M.. “What is the Free Software Foundation?” GNU’s Bulletin. 1(1) February, 1986.
(2) Open Source Initiative. “The History of OSI”
(3) Raymond, E.R.. “Goodbye, ‘free software’; hello, ‘open source’”. February, 1998.
(4) Free Software Foundation. “Categories of Free and Non-Free Software” GNU Project. April, 2010.
(5) European Comission. “Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and Study” June, 2001.