“Free software, also known as open source, libre software, FOSS,
FLOSS and even LOSS, relies on traditional software legal
protection, with a twist. Semantics aside (I will describe all the
above as ‘free software’), the tradition at law is that free
software is copyrighted, like most other software, and is not
released, unbridled, to the public domain. Authorial or ownership
rights can be asserted as with any bit of proprietary software.“The twist emerges when one examines what a free software
licence actually does in contrast with what its proprietary
counterpart seeks to achieve…”