What is FOSS?

For the purposes of this wiki and for r/FOSSdroid, FOSS apps must:

  • Have a FOSS license*
  • Be open source
  • Be free, as in freedom

They must not:

  • Have a proprietary EULA**

*A FOSS license is any typical open-source license. Common examples:

  • GPLv3
  • GPLv2
  • Apache 2.0
  • Mozilla MPL
  • And many more
    The above section needs work, and should be updated to include more FOSS licenses.

**A proprietary EULA:

  • Is listed as an End User License Agreement, or
  • Has provisions typical of proprietary software, or
  • Removes one of the FOSS freedoms

What are the FOSS Freedoms?

As used by the GNU project, the FOSS freedoms require that users can do the following:

  • Run
  • Copy
  • Distrubute
  • Study
  • Change, or
  • Improve

Anything that violates any of these rights is enough to be no longer considered FOSS.

Luckily, there's a simple way to tell! If it's on F-Droid by default, it's FOSS enough for us. If it has one of the above mentioned FOSS licenses, it is too.