If the FOSS community is united by its love of passionate debate, it is arguably divided in equal measure by diverging views on the purpose of free and open source software. To some, FOSS means simply software that is intended to be free, or without financial cost; to others, the open availability of its source code is what matters. Then there are those — perhaps most notably, GNU founder Richard Stallman — who argue vehemently that Freedom with a capital “F” is what FOSS is all about, with implications that extend into the political, philosophical and ethical realms.
