Category talk:Subject:Open source software

Limiting scope
I would like to limit the scope of this category to books discussing open source, such as the "FOSS ..." books, Open Culture, and FLOSS Concept Booklet. Otherwise it becomes very large due to the great number of programs that are open source. I believe most people care about what an application does, not its licensing. Thus I altered the description of the category and filed it under Category:Computer software and not Category:Computer software by type. -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:54, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe people care about both. I think this category should be for software that is open source and Category:Open_source should be for books that are about the concepts of open source in general. --dark lama  05:17, 10 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't mind having two categories if you feel people might search for software on the basis of them being open source. I fear such a category might become large, but if there's a distinction between open source philosophy and software with two different categories, I have no objections.-- Adrignola talk contribs 22:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)


 * If the category becomes too large in the future, this category can always be further divided like "Open source graphic software", "Open source music software", etc. Right now I don't think there are enough books to worry about dividing this category further. --dark lama  23:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

And what about Free Software?
As was explained by the FSF (and as could be seen by comparing the lists of free software and open source licenses – check the OpenWatcom one, for instance), the notions of Free software and Open-source software are a bit different.

However, as these sets of software vastly overlap, I do not think it would be a good idea to create one category for each of them. However, it may make sense to rename this category using an all-encompassing term, such as, for instance, Free and open-source software.

— Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 16:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)