FOSSM

Draft White Paper: Free and Open Source Software licensing in Medicine Draft, Draft

General definitions: Free and Open Source Software is often abbreviated as FOSS. Free software and Open Source software have specific definitions and legally enforceable licenses. 'Free' refers to the liberty to use and or distribute, not a price or value. They include the rights to run, copy, study, distribute and extend the licensed software. These rights are specifically granted with Free software licenses. Proprietary software licenses usually take away rights. Licenses that are considered free are determined by the Free Software Foundation Free Software Foundation and licenses that are considered Open Source are determined by the the Open Source Initiative. If a given work of software claims to be Free or Open Source but does not use licenses approved by one of these two organizations, it probably isn't Free or Open Source.

Some believe that FOSS software licensing is an especially good fit for medicine and medical practice because of its fast-changing nature, relatively small market and ability by 3rd parties to readily and directly scrutinize software for privacy, security and interoperability problems. In addition the community building and sharing aspect is akin to the publishing and sharing of medical knowledge for the greater good.

This is a popular though very incorrect impression that FOSS developers and users do not take the idea of intellectual property seriously. Nothing could be further from the truth. FOSS advocates believe very strongly in intellectual property rights and aim to protect them using appropriate licenses based on international copyright law.