Welcome
Welcome to open-ni, an organisation for promoting issues related to free and open source software in Northern Ireland. Please note that you can find more information on the site for our inaugural conference on the 1st February 2008. Register now!
Mission Statement
The mission of open-ni is to:
“To strategically promote awareness, understanding, development and uptake of free
and open source software across both the private and public sectors, as well as
enhancing the competitiveness of the indigenous software sector by exploiting the
opportunities offered by Open Source business models.”
FOSS - Free and Open Source Software
Free software refers to freedom, rather than price The Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman (RMS) defines free software as software that grants you the following "freedoms":
- to run it for any purpose;
- to study and adapt it (Source Code to your needs;
- to redistribute, so you can help others;
- to release improvements, so everyone can benefit.
Although many in the free software community dislike the phrase "open source", feeling that this does not indicate all of these freedoms, many others use the phrases interchangably.
Bruce Perens took the Debian Free Software Guidelines and used them as a basis for his Open Source Definition, which makes the close link between the two concepts. For this reason, we at open-ni use the term FOSS, which is inclusive of both traditions.