Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems recently proposed that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) formalise a scorecard "which articulates a holistic vision of software freedom against which businesses can be benchmarked," to determine whether a company is justified in describing itself as open source.

The logic for such a proposal is that "open source" has become a victim of its own success. As Phipps observes "...having businesses identify 'open source' purely on the basis of one 'input' - using an OSI-approved license - is no longer adequate, because the success of the open source approach has led so many different companies to want to exploit the name."

Free and open source software is about more than a license, and although there are clear differences in emphasis between free software, as represented by the Free Software Foundation, and open source, as represented by the Open Source Initiative, the differences on the ground are often less than some of the protagonists would have you believe.

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