Talk:Free and open-source software/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Malleus Fatuorum 15:27, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * General
 * Large chunks of this article have been copied almost word for word from the Free Software article, in which FOSS seems to be adequately covered already, which puts some doubt in my mind about the existence of this article. It needs to be a lot more than a copy of another one, and I frankly don't see that it is right now.


 * Lead
 * "Free software licences and open source licenses are used by many software packages." Such as what? Why does the article say nothing about the market penetration of any of the leading FOSS software, or indeed even name them?


 * "... the two terms grew out of different philosophies". Already said that in the previous paragraph.


 * "... the two terms grew out of different philosophies and are often used to signify different distribution methodologies." What's meant by "distribution methodologies" here? The citation seems to say nothing about any methodology for distribution.


 * History
 * The last part of the first paragraph is uncited, and there is an unaddressed request for clarification on which country's copyright law is being referred to.


 * "While some software might always be free, there would be a growing amount of software that was for sale only." This demonstrates the same confusion about what "free" means in this context as the free speech vs. free beer comment attempted to address.


 * The second paragraph is largely uncited.


 * The penultimate paragraph is uncited.


 * Naming
 * I'm unconvinced by this section, which largely just seems to add a little detail to what has been covered in the History section with a number of far too short paragraphs.


 * "The first known use of the phrase free open source software on Usenet was in a posting on 18 March 1998, just a month after the term open source itself was coined" is cited to this url. In what way does it support the claim? The best you can say is that it's the earliest use of the phrase on Usenet that you've found, which is at best original research.


 * Adoption by governments
 * This section is very choppy, with lots of very short paragraphs. It needs to be organised thematically; for instance, which governments have adopted Linux (of whatever flavour), other open-source software like OpenOffice, or perhaps categorise by office applications vs non, such as Apache and MySql, neither of which are mentioned strangely.


 * What are these governments actually adopting? Free software, open source software, or FOSS? In what way would a FOSS licence (is there such a thing?) differ from either of the other two types of licence? Is this section actually relevant to FOSS at all, rather than to the open source and free software articles?


 * References
 * There are five dead links.

Closing review as per nominator's request.