Hello,
As many of you know Open Classifieds, it’s a Free Open Source Software (FOSS). We are one of the few PHP Classifieds scripts that are really Free/Libre.
Whats Free/Libre
“to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software” – wikipedia
At OpenClassifieds LTD we are a small company that develops FOSS for-profit and we release our core software using GPLv3 and our Premium themes have a private license. So we use dual licensing.
All the software developed by us it’s freed and can be accessed at our Github page.
Our Free/Libre Software has this freedoms:
- Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
- Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
- Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
- Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code can range from highly impractical to nearly impossible.
Whats Free/Gratis
This other meaning of free (costs you 0 to download and to use) may not have the previously mentioned liberties and you can not inspect the code etc.
From wikipedia:
“Freemium is a pricing strategy by which a proprietary product or service (typically a digital offering such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for advanced features, functionality, or virtual goods.”
Restrictions of Freemium
Ways in which the product or service may be restricted in the free version include:
- Feature limited (e.g. a “lite” version of software, such as not including features like three-way video calling)
- Capacity limited (e.g. SQL Server Express, which is restricted to databases of 10GB or less)
- Seat limited (e.g. only usable on one computer rather than across a network)
- Customer class limited (e.g. only usable by educational users)
- Effort limited (e.g. Temple Run, in which all or most features are available for free, but require extended unlocking or slowly obtained in-game currency which can be accelerated or purchased for a fee)
- Support limited (e.g. users of a “lite” version do not receive telephone and/or email support)
- Time or bandwidth limited (e.g. Spotify, which limits the time free users can use the service for, resetting each month)
Conclusion
Even though if you download either Free/Libre or a Free/Gratis software you wont be paying anything. But, the big difference between both is the liberties that FOSS offers to you: modify the code, inspect it, learn from it, clone it! While with Free/Gratis you never know whats running at your server and you can not change almost anything, normally.
More info
- https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre_software
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-licensing
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_software
