Why Public Software?

Quite often we are asked why we use the term "Public Software", since most people use "Free Software" and/or "Open Source" why introducing yet another term? A few points for our choice:

• we chose the term in early 2000 when some very hot arguments were taking place on many lists, online forums etc We tried not to get involved in the infighting. We chose to focus on how we could use the ideas rather on what is the right name.
• we also chose "public" in the sense of software as a public good.
• "public software" is the name of the list and project, not an attempt to introduce another name. We do not in other words promote the use of the name.
• "public" is not used in the sense of "public domain".

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