“I heard that the open source software movement grew up when it
was noticed that people reacted badly to the idealism that the
phrase ‘free software’ suggests. In an attempt to attract more
people to free software they decided to move away from the ideas
implicit in the term ‘free software’ and use their own term ‘open
source’ which promotes the practical benefits of this style of
development.“There’s definitely been benefits to this approach: the open
source camp has attracted many new users to come and try free
software such as GNU/Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox etc…”