Related:

• proprietary: adj. 1. In {marketroid}-speak, superio
  implies a product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's own hardware or software designers....
• open source n. [common; also adj. `open-source'] Term coined in March 1998 following the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in source under licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use
  modify, and redistribute, the code. The intent was to be able to sell the hackers' ways of doing software to industry and the mainstream by avoid the negative connotations (to suits) of the term "free software"....
• The Movement Formerly Known As Open Source The battle over the Open Source trademark is heating up.
  Software in the Public Interest and the Open Source Initiative both hold competing claims to the trademark....
• hacker ethic n. 1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good
  and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible....
• General Public Virus n. Pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL)
  which requires that any tools or apps incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same anti-proprietary terms as GNU stuff....
• free software n. As defined by Richard M. Stallman and used by the Free Software movement, this means software that gives users enough freedom to be used by the free software community.
  Specifically, users must be free to modify the software for their private use, and free to redistribute it either with or without modifications, either commercially or noncommercially, either gratis or charging a distribution fee....
• brain-damaged: 1. [generalization of `Honeywell Brain Damage' (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Honeywell {{Multics}}] adj.
  Obviously wrong; {cretinous}; {demented}. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better....
• brittle adj. Said of software that is functional but easily broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself.
  Also, any system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to abnormal but expected external stimuli...
• New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#3) In the "Cathedral and the Bazaar", ESR mentions that one motivation behind Open Source software is ego-gratification.
  That's where OpenEgo, Inc. comes in. For a fee, the hackers at OpenEgo will produce a piece of Open Source software and distribute it in your name, thus building up your reputation and ego....